


Tethered to the Past

by perfectpro



Series: Tethered to the Past [1]
Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Caroline Forbes is an Original, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:14:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29291952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectpro/pseuds/perfectpro
Summary: As the years have passed, Caroline finds that she is more and more removed from the girl born in that village, the girl who was innocent and fascinated by the boy who roamed the forest in search of wildflowers and berries to make into paints.She is no longer that girl, but Niklaus is no longer that boy.
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson
Series: Tethered to the Past [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2201007
Comments: 28
Kudos: 203





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Thunder Answered Back, by Gabby's World.

In the late spring, they are married under a cloudless sky. Caroline wears a linen shift dyed blue with the wildflowers that grow on the riverbank on the northern edge of the village. Though he has always known the beauty that his bride possessed, Niklaus has never seen such loveliness before, the sea glass of her eyes sparkling back at him.

Esther orchestrates the handfasting ceremony, tying the rope that binds them. 

“These are the hands that will work alongside yours,” she pronounces, “the hands that will help hold your family together.” Wrapping it one final time, she declares, “The hands whose fate is bound to your own.”

Niklaus kisses her before the ceremony finishes, before it’s truly appropriate, and Caroline laughs with reckless abandon. 

Their first dance is held in firelight as the full moon rises, and the village watches as they touch hands and circle each other. The pounding beat speeds up with each turn, growing ever closer to the pinnacle. It is a dance, but it is a hunt as well, each move matched in succession. In the years that are yet to come, Niklaus will look back on this moment and think that they have always known what their future holds.

“I love you,” Caroline whispers to him, as though it is some kind of secret. She says it as though their love is still as forbidden as the days they would steal in the forest. 

“As I love you,” Niklaus echoes, and he means it with every fiber of his being. 

Thinking back, every human memory seems to be underwater. The details obscure, blend together, every sensation is dulled compared to the truth of consciousness that will be revealed to them. Every night except this, which they will remember in perfect, glowing detail. 

The first night of their marriage, the first time he presses inside her without concern over ruining her prospects, they are wild with want. No longer hidden among the trees, listening with care to ensure they are not found. Now, it is their right as husband and wife to have each other. There is no shame to the wanton way they touch.

Caroline digs her nails into his back hard enough to draw blood, leaving crescent shaped marks that scab over and scar. A memory of their time together, something that marks him as belonging solely to her.

Even after their bodies have changed, becoming stronger and immortal, the scars inflicted on his still-human form will remain.

-x-

Marriage is not fated to be the only thing that binds them.

His family becomes her own, surrounding her with closeness and siblings and a comfort that she has never known before. Mikael is a different story, but Niklaus’s siblings welcome her with open arms. Caroline bonds with Henrik, the youngest, weaving stories with the same nimble fingers that twine fishing nets for the river.

“He has always been so curious. You indulge his fantasies,” Niklaus tells her as though he does not do the same. His eyes are laughing, and she thinks that one day he will be this way with their children.

This indulgence is what leads Niklaus into taking Henrik with him to the neighboring village, the one with tales of wolves. They walk into the forest, Henrik balanced on his older brother’s shoulders, waving behind him to Caroline. The full moon hangs yellow and golden above them.

“You can tell me about the wolves when you return,” she calls after their retreating forms.

The next time that she sees them, Niklaus carries Henrik’s body in his arms, blood on his front and guilt in his eyes. She runs for Esther without thinking, because surely there is something to be done.

After Henrik is buried, they stay with his family because the storm is so great. Esther invites them, makes room amongst the furs, and Caroline will always wonder whether the storm was Esther’s creation in the same way they were. 

Niklaus’s face, contorted by rage and grief as Mikael plunges his dagger into her heart, is the last memory she has of her truly human life.

Caroline wakes from death gasping for air. The awakening is not that which has she grown used to, the growing sensation of Niklaus pressed to her back as the sun pulls over the horizon and the nightingales sing outside. It is as sudden as a bolt of lightning, a clap of thunder, a stab in the heart. She clutches where the wound was, but there is nothing to find, no pierced flesh beneath her fingers. 

As the first to be killed, she is the first to wake, but not by long. Next to her, Rebekah comes to with a shout, and Caroline clutches her with shaking hands, trying to soothe her and unsure of how. She doesn’t understand what has happened, what will they will soon be made into.

It isn’t until they’ve choked down what Esther claims to be blood but smells too sweet to be believed that comprehension begins to dawn. “Immortal,” Esther says, and Caroline can hear the truth of it, how her heart beats steadily as she says the words.

They are cursed, cursed to live on blood in order to survive. The worst fate imaginable, at least until they discover the truth of Niklaus’s parentage and what it means to be truly cursed. 

The wolf inside him bursts through after the kill, his hybrid nature revealed by the change, but it isn’t until Caroline feels her bones start to turn that they understand the magic at work. The handfasting at their wedding was not merely ceremonial, but a spell to truly bind them, to join their hearts and lives in every way possible.

In doing so, Esther has created another hybrid, another being in possession of the wolf inside.

-x-

There are stirrings within her that are not her own. That is the first she is aware, but when she looks into Niklaus’s eyes, she finds the answers to her questions.

They have always been good at reading each other, at communicating with few words between them, but this is another dimension. A link between them, a connection that pulls. When she sees him, she does not know where she ends and he begins. She thinks perhaps it was worth all of this horror they have endured in such a short time to find that they share the same heart.

Belonging to each other has never been a question since the first time he laid eyes on her. Tatia could never draw his attention again, much to Elijah’s pleasure, but this sensation is something entirely new. There is a claim that was not there before, not even since waking up in the cave with blood dried on their clothes and no injuries to be found.

He is knit into her bones, sinking within their marrow into her very being.

The kill has changed everything, has changed them.

-x-

The family that she has chosen is the one who is to condemn her. Mikael restrains her when she seeks to go to her husband, trapped in a circle of salt. “Niklaus!” she screams, blind to everything except for the fear, the pain that shoots through her when the spell begins.

“I have made monsters of you both,” Esther had said, but that cannot be true, not when Caroline has never known such fullness, such completion.

Esther’s chanting gets louder, overpowers her screams, and she can feel the seal begin to take hold. Can feel the wolf inside her as its locked away, and her connection to Niklaus that they haven’t even begun to explore along with it.

Niklaus claws at the ground, unable to reach the salt and breach the barrier, and she cannot hear his screams but she knows them all the same. His rage, his pain. They are only matched by her own.

When she breaks free of Mikael’s hold, it is Finn who catches her arm, who holds her back. The first betrayal by a sibling, and Caroline will remember this moment, how he could have saved his brother and chose not to. She will harbor this hatred and feed it, even as Elijah reminds them of their vow.

What can always and forever mean when they have been cursed for eternity? 

Of all the betrayals that are to come, it is Finn who commits the first. Niklaus watches Finn grab Caroline and twist her arm even as she fights against it. However long they have been spelled to remain upon this earth, he will never forgive his brother.

-x-

When Esther is dead and Mikael hunts them across time and continents, Caroline will think of the life that was ripped away from them. A humble home where they could enjoy the simple pleasures of a good hunt, a warm meal, a prosperous harvest, the laughter of the children they would have had.

“Our mother, Niklaus!” Elijah rages. He is the picture of indignation, as though the woman he is speaking of was merely the village healer she always portrayed herself as and not the one who has trapped them in this unknowable state.

“Our mother is the one who did this to us,” Niklaus responds. “We are made into these creatures by her doing! I am locked away from my true self because of her!”

It is the first time they will have this argument, but it will not be the last. In time, it will become a familiar avenue of conversation. Elijah and Finn are horrified by their brother’s action, Rebekah and Kol uncertain and scared.

Caroline would not have killed Esther, but she is the only one who understands Niklaus’s pain, what it means to not have access to a portion of her very soul. When she looks at her husband, she sees the agony in his eyes but cannot feel it. The connection they once shared, the bond that sealed their souls, was severed by Esther’s hand.

None of his siblings will ever truly recognize the suffering she has inflicted them with. 

They are immortal. Bound to these bodies that will not age, that will not change. Seventeen and newly married, Caroline is acutely aware of what has been taken away from her. Rebekah will come to know the same grief, she thinks, but as yet it has not found her.

She will never get to see her womb swell with new life, stomach ripening with time as the child grows. She will never hold a baby in her arms as she tries to determine whether he more closely resembles her or Niklaus. The future of legacy has been ripped from them, and instead they will be undying, forced to survive on human blood.

-x-

When they go about undaggering his siblings after the assault by the hunters, Caroline watches how Niklaus hesitates in front of his oldest brother. She has already found servants and compelled them to wait for Kol, Elijah, and Rebekah to wake up and feed.

“Would you have him return to us?” she finally asks.

Niklaus looks between her and Finn’s ashen face. “He would leave again; he told me so. He and Sage were going to secure passage back to our homeland.” 

So they would not have to tolerate his presence any longer, but some part of Caroline burns at the idea of Finn merely returning to his partner. “They do not know what it is to be torn from their love,” she seethes, quietly furious.

A century gone by, and still she feels so keenly the place in herself where Niklaus should be. When they speak of it, often at night when the others have fallen asleep, she knows he feels it just as acutely. 

Her meaning is plain, and Niklaus has eyes only for her when he vows, “Let them discover what it means to be torn apart.”

Perhaps their actions are the betrayal that Elijah will always claim them to be, but he will never discover that Caroline’s words were what sealed Finn’s fate. Whatever secrets are kept between the family, it is Caroline and Niklaus who keep their own council, who know that they will not let anything come between them as they seek to end the curse. Leaving Finn in the coffin is a joint decision made between partners in a marriage of equals.

When the rest of his siblings come to, they go on a bit of a feeding frenzy. Kol especially, his shirt soaked with blood as he comments how lucky they are that they’ll never know the pains of being daggered.

“Hybrid advantage,” Caroline chirps from where she’s seated at Niklaus’s side, watching how he lets the conversation slip away from him, how his eyes focus on areas where no shadow lingers. Perhaps he should feed as well, she thinks before remembering they had done so while waiting for his siblings to wake.

“No!” Niklaus roars all at once, suddenly lunging from his position at his brother.

Kol goes down immediately (he’ll later claim it was how Nik took him by surprise), and it takes Elijah and Rebekah to drag him out from Niklaus’s grasp while Caroline pulls her husband back. Kol’s already healed, but Niklaus’s hands are bloodied, revealing how much damage he was able to cause so quickly.

“What is the meaning of this?” Caroline asks him, running her hands over his face as the others tend to Kol. She doesn’t know what could have motivated Niklaus to attack his brother without warning.

For a moment, he seems to calm under her touch before jerking back, looking at her with unseeing eyes. “Witch,” he snarls before plunging his hand into her chest and sinking his fingers into her heart.

-x-

When she wakes up from her second death, Niklaus is holding her in his arms and whispering apologies into her hair. Rebekah hovers over her shoulder, and Elijah and Kol watch them from a few feet behind Niklaus. They look at the scene with a watchfulness that sets her on edge, but she doesn’t know what they could be guarding against. It isn’t until that she remembers the fire alight in Niklaus’s eyes that she jerks away from his touch.

“You transformed into Esther before me,” he says, not so much a defense as an admission of guilt, and none of them are sure as to what has happened.

It is a terrible way to discover the Hunter’s Curse. 

Niklaus has periods of lucidity in between his dreams of madness, but he used the most recent one in an attempt to take his own life. Caroline stumbles onto the suicide scene, the noose hanging from the rafters, and screams for the others to help.

Elijah is the one who says they need to restrain him. “For our protection, as well as his own,” he tells her, and Caroline brings a hand to her heart absentmindedly. 

“He is my husband,” she whispers, because who is she if this is what she agrees to?

“We will search for a cure,” Rebekah vows. “No matter how long it takes.”

“How will he live with himself when he remembers he’s hurt you? What will he do if he finds out it’s happened again?” Elijah asks.

A fair point when she remembers Niklaus’s broken expression staring down at her as she came back into consciousness, her chest aching from where he’d broken it open. “He is my husband,” she echoes quietly, at a loss.

“And he is my brother, but currently he is murderous and suffering under delusions,” Kol snaps at her from where he’s struggling to keep Niklaus’s arms pinned against his sides.

“I will destroy you!” Niklaus bellows, presumably speaking to Mikael, who wears one of their faces in his mind.

Rebekah touches Caroline’s shoulder and Caroline reaches for her sister without thought. Beyond her, Rebekah is the one of them who is most affected, who loves Niklaus most dearly. He was always so gentle with his younger sister, and it is startling for her to see this side of him.

After another outburst, Caroline closes her eyes and makes a resolution. “If we do this, we will do whatever it takes to bring him back. I will not damn him to this existence, Elijah. He will not suffer any longer than he must.”

Elijah nods, bringing her into a hug, and she thinks how strange it is, to find herself in this family without her closest ally, and yet to know that she is supported nevertheless. A true member in all but blood.

-x-

More than fifty years pass before the final hunter is replaced, their mission active once more. Better to have the Brotherhood of Five searching for them and Niklaus alive and well. They have been hunted by better and still have not yet been found.

Caroline goes to ensure the last hunter fulfills the kill and starts his destiny, unwilling to trust even Elijah with the task. Her husband is tormented by hallucinations, unable to tell dreams from reality, and there are no lengths to which she would not go to end his horrors. 

She creates the sacrificial vampire from a man who believes the lie of her physical form and tries to take advantage of it. The young face, the thin limbs with no discernable muscle. 

When he presses her into an alleyway and reaches between her legs, she feels no remorse before she bites into her wrist and forces him to drink before snapping his neck. Even as a human, she would have hated this man, but she never would have been able to imagine orchestrating his murder.

As the years have passed, she finds that she is more and more removed from the girl born in that village, the girl who was innocent and fascinated by the boy who roamed the forest in search of wildflowers and berries to make into paints. 

She is no longer that girl, but Niklaus is no longer that boy. She only hopes that when he discovers what she has done, he will be able to look past the she has become.

If she was the one who had ended the hunters, she knows that he would do the same for her.

Indeed, she’s met by Kol at the door when she comes home. “I liked him better chained up,” he sneers.

“I should dagger you just for that,” Niklaus announces from atop the stairs. His eyes, when they meet hers, are no longer haunted by ghosts unseen. “Hello, love.”

Without a moment to spare, Caroline races up the stairs and into his waiting arms. Fifty years gone by, and how she has missed the comfort of his touch. To stand in his hold and feel truly safe, as though they are untouched by time. As though they are still the same as they have always been.

“I missed you,” she whispers, her chin tucked into the hollow between his neck and shoulder.

“And you shall never have to again. I am so sorry.” He presses the words into the crown of her head, and she stretches up to meet him with her lips. Elijah had tried to warn her that she needed to be prepared in the case that Niklaus was permanently altered from the curse and the hallucinations that plagued him.

She is relieved to find him just as he was. 

“He’s only been back for a day and already you need privacy,” Rebekah jokes, but her nose is wrinkled with genuine distaste when she sees them. 

“Surely you knew to expect this, sister,” Niklaus says over his shoulder. His smile is as mischievous as Caroline remembered, brighter than she had dared to hope for. “I have not truly seen my wife in all of these years. She remains as beautiful as ever. How could I let her go unappreciated?”

“I had nearly forgotten your affection for each other,” Elijah comments from the dining room on the ground floor, dry as ever. 

“And I had nearly forgotten how often you all love to cast judgement,” Caroline responds, delighted when Niklaus presses a kiss to her neck. Rebekah’s suggestion is looking better with every passing moment.

-x-

Their travels take them across the world as they try to escape Mikael over the centuries. All of the pleasures that Caroline once missed from their simple village, she finds that she prefers her new life to that which she shed. Every sunrise and sunset is a majestic thing, the bold colors blending together and spilling into each other. How would she have been satisfied with the quiet life that had awaited her?

Once, she believed them to be monsters, but now she finds that she does not feel the same way.

Life is better with a purpose, beyond just that of survival. They have a villain to outrun, a curse to break. Even their dalliances are filled with the kind of relaxation that Caroline cannot imagine having found in their village. 

“That kind of life never would have suited you,” Niklaus agrees from where he stands across from her, looking over his easel. “Tilt your head a bit more, love. No, to the left.”

She does so, watching how he casts an appraising look at the paint before going back to it. No longer having to make due with berries and wildflowers from the forest, now he uses true pigment on cloth canvases. An artist honing his craft, painting his muse’s likeness.

“I don’t think we would have been unhappy,” she says after a moment.

“Oh?”

The idea of the life unlived is unfamiliar, what Esther ripped from them without asking for their consent. Still, there was once a time when she mourned what she lost. She is much changed from that girl, but that does not change the fact that girl was real, and so were her desires.

Power and speed are among the benefits of their condition. For the most part, Caroline has overcome her distaste for blood. The price of survival seems simple when compared to the alternative. The one regret she truly has over not being human any longer is that they will never have a child. Their life is one filled with adventures of every kind, but that is one they will never share in. 

At their wedding, Caroline remembers thinking that she had never felt such exhilaration and joy. That is still how she feels whenever she looks at her husband and realizes that he is hers, always and forever. “We would have been together,” she says at last. “That would have been enough.”

A mortal life with her husband would have been fulfilling. No palaces or riches, surely, but Caroline tries to imagine waiting to see Niklaus return from a hunt, how her fingers would have callused from weaving fishing nets. 

She can almost recall what she found so alluring about that existence. 

“That will always be enough,” Niklaus breathes, so quiet that no mortal would hear the words. 

When she looks at him, his eyes are burning with the same passion she remembers as from when he stood across from her in that handfasting ceremony.

-x-

Katerina Petrova changes everything. For the first time since the curse, there is the possibility of hope on their horizon. When Caroline sees her at the party, she clutches Niklaus’s arm hard enough to hurt. The sight of her is a beacon, a reminder that there is a way out.

She wears Tatia’s face, and she charms Elijah in much the same way as her predecessor had. Caroline is just pleased that the girl has enough sense to not try such things with her husband.

“Do you remember what it was, to feel that bond?” she asks Niklaus at night, tracing the shape of his lips with her fingers.

The memory of the feeling is so old; half a millennium has passed since Esther first placed the curse on them. That connection joined them, linked their souls together. They are bound to each other even without it, but Caroline looks at Niklaus, who is so close that they are touching, and feels so far away.

“We will be united again. As lovers, as wolves,” he says, the words pressed into her skin.

The joy of finding Katerina is multiplied tenfold into rage when they discover her escape and subsequent transition. Caroline does not need to feel Klaus’s emotion within herself to know that he wants to go after her. “We can chase her later on. She has only bought herself an eternity of suffering,” she tells him, because the one benefit of the situation they have found themselves in that there is no rush.

Katerina is no longer mortal, and she has only ensured that she will live long enough to face the misery that they have in store for her.

First, though, a visit to her homeland, where they bloody the walls. Niklaus bites into the flesh of her mother’s heart before holding it out to Caroline. “I cannot give you hers yet,” he explains, and Caroline sinks her fangs into the offering.

A vow between them, as binding as those that they made at their wedding. They will end this curse and unite their souls once more. If they have to wait another half millenium to do such a thing, so be it.

-x-

Savage is what they call him. The word lingers, transforming him into legend over the years. Caroline usually stays more discreet, but there are whispers that a bride travels with Klaus, a woman who is as beautiful as she is terrible.

It is not so appalling a legacy. They have more than earned their place in the horrors of history.

“At least you have a legend,” Kol says when word gets back to them that an old family of vampires has made their way to Spain. “I’m just a part of the family.” He’s so disappointed that he’s almost pouting, which is ridiculous. Kol murders more than the rest of them put together. They’ve left their last two homes because he terrorized enough people that the towns were rumored as cursed and their food supply dried up in the area.

Caroline is nearly eight hundred years old, and she wishes she didn’t think of the human population as a food supply. It’s a phrase she’s picked up from Niklaus, who is much more careless about humans than she is.

She guesses they all are, though, except for her and Rebekah.

Bekah’s sire line is made of former humans that she took a liking to for whatever reason. Handsome suitors who went on to break her heart, young ladies maids who shared gossip and a desire to stay young forever. Her blood runs through the veins of those who she takes interest in out of pity and a misplaced wish to surround herself with more like-minded. 

The call that she makes is always too early. Caroline watches every newborn vampire leave Rebekah for freedom, and her sister despairs by trying to find more to gather near to her.

Caroline has never been generous enough with her blood to make many in her own sire line. They are out there, surely, because she has no control of who they turn once they exist, but her direct descendants are few. With few exceptions, she believes humans should be allowed to die as humans.

For many years, the vampire she turned to finish the hunter’s curse was her only changling.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Klaus turns humans for a competitive advantage. They are pawns in his game, weapons to fire against Mikael, always preparing for the hunt. When he does so for his family’s protection, she cannot bring herself to mind, but when he does it for minions to lord over, she cannot stop herself from voicing her distaste.

“You are a part of the original family. That is legend enough. Besides, you’d have more legends if you let more people live. The only reason people know about Klaus is because I have to intercede before the disaster is over,” Caroline says, flexing her hands above the harpsichord before going back to her scales.

They have remained in Spain for many years now, long enough to build a home and develop a routine to their life. Too long, if rumor has gotten back to them of their own existence. Long enough for Mikael to find them.

It is Kol’s violence that gives them away, and Caroline thinks that she has never been so pleased to not have a younger sibling of her own when Kol snarls, “Father just wants Niklaus and Caroline. If we leave them, surely he will leave the rest of us alone.”

She cannot bring herself to feel sorrow for him when Elijah subdues him while Niklaus plunges the dagger into his younger brother’s body. He would have abandoned them to Mikael’s rage and destruction, left them alone after all the promises they have made. 

Elijah arranges a ship that will take them back to the continent they were born on. The new world, it was called when it came into fashion. As though it was a world undiscovered instead of filled with its own inhabitants. 

They board the ship with their most prized possessions. Caroline’s harpsichord, Niklaus’s paintings, and Finn’s and Kol’s coffins make the journey with them. A new voyage of course, but also a homecoming in a way.

Niklaus picks the city, and he tells her of New Orleans as they watch the Spanish shore fade into the distance. 

“It is a young country, but I think we will be able to find a home there. We will be surrounded by food, music, art, culture. A new adventure for the both of us,” he whispers, his breath hot in her ear.

-x-

His promise fulfills itself, and New Orleans is like nowhere they have ever been before. The society welcomes them easily enough with the help of some compulsion to help the locals understand the new family who has found a home. And find a home they do, in the center of the French Quarter.

Caroline and Rebekah adore the fashion of the time, how the cut of the dresses is almost scandalous when compared to the traditional ones of France. For once, the entire family seems to be happy. Rebekah has found what she believes to be another chance at love, Caroline busies herself with preparing their new family home, and Elijah is soothed by his family’s happiness. There is even talk of un-daggering Kol.

So, of course, Klaus has to dash their hopes of peace.

“The governor’s son? Really, I should have known better than to think you’d have let your sister be happy for so long,” Caroline hisses when she recognizes the corpse. What’s awful is the lack of surprise that she feels. She didn’t like the boy even as Rebekah droned on about his attributes, but she certainly didn’t think that merited his throat being torn out in such a way.

Niklaus shrugs. In much the same way as she cannot muster enough shock to inject into her tone, he cannot act as though she should not have expected it. 

Humans joke about old married couples, how they have been together for so long that they know each other almost too well. Despite how they look so young that they have to pass themselves off as newlyweds wherever they go, even mortals notice the comfort they have with each other.

“Rebekah will find another suitor. Hopefully a less annoying one.” He accepts the handkerchief that she hands him, wiping the trail of blood that lingers on his chin. 

The only thing that is truly surprising about the scene, Caroline thinks, is how neat Niklaus is at the center of it. Elijah is only true stickler for cleanliness among them, and Kol is on the other end entirely, often soaked in blood to the point where Caroline has given him a basin of his own for laundry. Niklaus doesn’t mind showing evidence of his carnage, indifferent about whether his hands show the blood that stains his soul.

Here and now, though, there is only the small trail of blood that now lingers on her handkerchief. On him at least. The rest of the room has fallen victim to a very different fate, and Caroline lifts her skirts to avoid them snagging on any of the drying pools of blood in the vicinity.

-x-

Later, after the funeral, when they ride back to the French Quarter with a boy who stares at them with dark eyes, Caroline thinks that at least this destruction has given them a new life. Rebekah is inconsolable still and has not yet forgiven Niklaus, but she has lost before and will lose again. Time will soothe that ache, and they have an endless stretch of it before them.

“Marcellus means warrior,” the young boy tells her, repeating the name that Niklaus has given him.

She does not need to look at her husband to know that he sees something of himself in this boy, this child not recognized by his tyrannical father, this boy who will grow into a man with the need to prove himself in the world.

“The name comes from Mars, the Roman god of war,” she says, already thinking of the plans they’ll need to put in motion when they arrive home.

They’ll need the tailor to come in. He’ll need new clothes; two suits, four sets of day wear. The room that they were planning on for Kol can be made into Marcel’s without too many changes. It’s the room on the same hall as their own, and it has a beautiful view of the courtyard. She’s in the process of changing the courtyard flowers with the seasons. Is there a favorite that he would prefer to have, that would help him feel at home?

All those things can be handled later. “Welcome to our family,” she says at last.

Niklaus slips his hand into hers as the carriage gets moving past the cotton fields, and Marcellus grips the edge of the door as he watches the only home he has ever known shrink in the distance.

-x-

As New Orleans burns around them, Klaus pulls at her hand. The opera house will fall to the ground, and he knows that Caroline is not so fragile as to perish from that, but Mikael is here, and they are in danger. All of them, for she is hunted for her curse as well, and they must leave.

“Marcellus!” Caroline screams, the word torn from her throat as though she did not give it permission to leave. Their world is falling, burning with the city they have built, and Klaus has lost his son. He will not lose his wife as well.

“There is nothing to be done, my love,” he swears to her. The words cannot give her comfort, but there will be time for that later. Now, they do not have a moment to waste. Every second that passes is another that leaves them in Mikael’s path.

Elijah is buying them time, but they do not have much longer. Rebekah pulls at Caroline’s shoulder, begging her to move, to come with them. “We need you,” she pleads, and she needs Caroline just as much as Klaus does, the only true friend left for her in this world.

“We have to go,” Klaus says, because there is a car waiting to take them as far away as they can get, and he will not witness his wife’s demise. They have lost enough, and they are at risk of losing more.

“I loved him too. We will hold a funeral later, for now we must run. Mikael is almost upon us,” Rebekah cries, desperate as she claws at Caroline to pull her along with them.

The falling ash from the opera house swirls around them, and Klaus might mistake it for snow if not for the gray soot it leaves in its wake. Smoke rises, fire the emblem of the destruction around them, and he watches as Caroline tears her gaze from the theatre, gathering her skirts as she does so. Her eyes shine, reflecting the blaze through her tears. 

The kingdom they built in New Orleans was never meant to outlive them, but Klaus never imagined leaving it in this way. He drives like a madman, hellbent on escaping their tormentor, and Caroline’s knuckles are white as she grips the upholstery. 

When he reaches over to cover one of her hands with his own, she doesn’t withdraw but neither does she relax and accept the touch. Her grief is all-consuming, like his own, but he cannot risk being dragged into the pit of his own despair and losing the family that he still has.

The only noises are Rebekah’s sobs, swallowed down before escaping once more. They serve as the soundtrack for the drive to Chicago, directly north because Klaus cannot clear his mind enough to think of a different sort of plan. Elijah is behind, holding Mikael off, leading him astray, and they will have to move Kol’s and Finn’s coffins soon enough. They cannot fall into their father’s hands.

Stopped outside of a gas station on the outskirts of St. Louis, Klaus fills the car while Rebekah has gone inside to fill other urges. When he suggests that they do the same, Caroline looks at him through a fog of anguish, as though seeing him for the first time.

“My son,” she whispers, and the words are raw, the first she’s spoken since she screamed Marcellus’s name in the French Quarter. Her hand reaches for him briefly before aborting the motion altogether. “He was my son.”

Grasping her hand before it can be withdrawn totally, Klaus refuses to let another moment pass where they aren’t touching, where he doesn’t have the concrete proof of her survival in front of him. “He was our son,” he reminds her, because the grief in her heart is only equal to that in his own. “We will make a new life, and we will grieve him.”

She draws his hand to her heart and looks deep into his eyes. “We will avenge him,” she vows, fangs sharpening at the words.

Nearly a millennium spent running, and she will not live like this. Hunted, as though she is prey and not predator. They are a force to be reckoned with, and she does not want to run any longer.

“We will avenge him,” he returns to her, swearing it, grasping her hand in his and knowing that this is a loss that they will never truly recover from.

-x-

Chicago is a good way to pass the time, and Klaus ignores his grief, preferring instead to lose himself to the jazz scene. It is nothing compared to the music that followed them on the streets of New Orleans, but there is a different sort of swing in the notes. The people are different, a byproduct of their upbringing, and he finds them to be good for taking his mind off what they left behind.

“Going out again?” Caroline asks from the second floor, pulling her dressing gown tighter around her. A lesser man wouldn’t be able to detect the judgement in her tone. 

“Just getting home, love,” he answers her, tossing his jacket on a chaise.

Where Klaus and Rebekah have found pleasure and distraction on the bars that litter Chicago’s underground, even with the prohibition, Caroline has all but shut herself away in the mansion that they have taken to calling home. Every invitation to join them is declined, and instead she readies rooms for members of their family who will never see them.

She looks over the grandfather clock and huffs a small laugh. “Well, you’re back earlier than last time. Did you enjoy yourself?” she asks, leaning forward and propping her elbows up on the railing.

“I met a new friend, actually,” Klaus informs her. His eyes are dancing, the laughter in them evident, and she hasn’t seen him this joyful since Marcellus came home from the Great War.

“You don’t have friends.” He has siblings and a wife, bonds that were sworn and vows that were made. Niklaus has never been so fickle as to merely have a friend. Her eyes narrow, assessing him carefully as she gives him a full once over.

“Are you looking for bloodstains?” he asks, lifting up his clean hands for review.

She descends the stairs, the train of her robe flowing behind her. “Or more damning evidence. Lipstick on the collar, perhaps.” When she reaches him, she inspects his jaw and then accepts the kiss he places on her cheek.

“As though I could ever find anyone tempting when I know I’m coming home to you.” He presses another kiss to her other cheek and then meets her lips with his.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, but first I’d like to hear more about this friend,” Caroline says. “It’s the first time you’ve come home with this kind of news.” She pulls him onto the couch with her, crossing her legs and leaning into his side.

The door opens again before he can say anything, Rebekah spilling inside as she drags a young man with her. Unlike Klaus, blood clings to their clothes and mouths.

“Is this the ball and chain?” the man asks, his words slurring together.

Rebekah laughs, clinging to him, holding herself up from where she clutches at the front of his jacket.

“Ripper,” Klaus says, his voice low. A warning.

Caroline straightens and pulls away, shoving aside the jacket that Klaus offers her. “You’ve heard of me, but clearly not enough to know to mind your manners,” she hisses, veins darkening around her eyes. 

“Caroline, this is darling Stefan. Stefan, this is Caroline, my sister. She’s Nik’s wife,” Rebekah introduces them, cheerfully drunk and smiling so wide that it threatens to split her face.

The sight soothes something in Caroline, who has barely seen her sister laugh since they fled the French Quarter as it burned around them. “Pleased to meet you, darling Stefan,” she says at last, fractionally warmer.

Rebekah laughs again, helpless as she reaches for the bannister in some kind of a lurch. She pulls Stefan with her, and they make their way up the stairs, still connected wherever possible. It reminds Caroline of the three-legged races she’s seen humans do for fun.

When they finally arrive at the top and manage to not topple down to the beginning, and when the door to Rebekah’s room has been shut, Caroline looks over at her husband and asks, “Has it really been so long since I’ve seen her happy?”

Wrapping an arm around her, Niklaus kisses her soundly. “We were all happy, once. We will be again.”

The ghost of a smile passes over Caroline’s face before she looks away. “I wish I was as sure of that as you are.” She is jealous of his ability to move past things, to bury his emotions so efficiently.

“One day at a time, love. There is no other way to live.” He kisses her again as he says, “Come to bed with me.”

“I’ve already woken for the day; I don’t need more sleep.”

“Then we won’t sleep.” Another kiss, longer, lingering. “Come to bed, love.”

-x-

When the peace they have found in Chicago inevitably crumbles, Caroline does not waste a moment. “Go after Rebekah; I will handle Stefan,” she tells Niklaus before stumbling into the warzone that the bar has become.

Stefan is behind the bar, and he looks stunned by the situation he’s found himself in. That is how she knows that Rebekah has not been altogether honest about the danger they are up against. “Caroline, what’s happened?” he asks, fangs dropping as the scent of blood fills the air. 

For a moment, she lets herself think about bringing Stefan with them. He makes Rebekah so happy after all, but the massacres he’s capable of make those of Kol’s doing seem tame in comparison. Mikael would only find them faster with the trail of bodies he would leave in their wake. Better to deal with Rebekah’s disappointment than with Mikael’s wrath.

“My father-in-law is after us; we need to leave,” she tells him.

“Where are we going?” he asks, and his devotion to them might be useful if he were capable of keeping his monster under control.

Pupils dilating with intent, Caroline tells him, “Niklaus, Rebekah, and I are leaving. You will forget about us until we tell you otherwise. You will go and live a fulfilling life.” She watches the confusion in his face as the compulsion takes over. “Thank you for reminding Niklaus of what it is to have a brother.”

He deserves more than a blank space where his time with her family was, but she does not have time to give him anything more. Gunfire rains down around them, and Caroline darts forward to press a kiss to his cheek before running off to meet Niklaus and Rebekah.

Or just Niklaus, as the case may be.

“Rebekah would not go anywhere without him,” he says, waving his hand at a storage unit down the road. “She will be waiting for us when we return for her.”

Their sister is to be stored in a coffin, and so they are parted from the last members of the family. Finn, Kol, and Rebekah have been daggered by their own hands. Elijah is to the wind, in places unknown after leading Mikael away from New Orleans a decade before. 

In the entire world, after nearly a millennium together, they are all they have left. In some ways, it feels appropriate.

-x-

The better part of a century goes by before they hear rumors of a doppelganger. This time, they are truly alone. Even Elijah has turned away from them after discovering the truth of what happened to Rebekah. This news is the first piece of hope that they have received in a long time.

“In Mystic Falls,” Caroline tells him, almost disbelieving. The discovery is too much to be a coincidence.

“Shall we return home, love?” Klaus asks. His grin is shaded and filled with terrible promises, and he does not resemble the boy who was her first love in that village. His hair is darker now, and his eyes show the shadows of their past. 

Despite of his changes, she has changed as well, and she finds him just as alluring as she did when their eyes first met in firelight. 

They seal the decision with a kiss, and Caroline pulls away to pant against his mouth, “This one will not escape. I will not bear being parted from you any longer.” The waiting that they have endured to be with each other has been excruciating, more than she ever knew to expect when Esther first condemned them to this fate. 

“We will be wolves again. I want to chase you under the light of the full moon,” he whispers, and she closes her eyes to imagine the scene.

She pictures the night of their wedding, the full moon that they danced under. Drawn to each other, circling, each step bringing them closer to the future that they would embark on. The only time she has ever felt closer to him was after his first kill, when he triggered the curse for both of them.

“Hybrids at last,” she responds. A blend of both their kinds, finally.

-x-

The third doppelganger (or the fourth, as the case may be) is different than her predecessors. Elena does not have the manipulative nature of Tatia or Katerina, and she does not have the drive for survival that led to Katerina being chased across the world for. She is, for all intents and purposes, a normal teenage girl who is at the center of this tragedy.

The only other surprise is seeing Stefan again, who looks at her with eyes that do not recognize their relationship. His devotion is to the doppelganger this time instead of to her family. Part of her wonders if it would be any different if Rebekah were with them, but that doesn’t matter.

He is but another obstacle between them and their destiny.

Monsters, this gang of teenagers calls them, and monsters they must see. How simple their perspective, to look in on a millennium and to see the worst facet. When they have fulfilled their destiny, they will be able to revive their family. They will hunt Mikael as he hunted them, and Marcellus’s death will be avenged. All of the pain he has caused them will come to an end.

So yes, if a vampire, a werewolf, and a doppelganger have to die to ensure that future will come to fruition, then Caroline will kill them twice over just to guarantee it. 

The wolf lunges at Klaus, unaware of the danger he is. He rips her heart from her chest without a thought, and Caroline’s only concern is why the witch let the circle break for it.

The girl’s aunt, confused and barely aware of what’s happening, dies quickly. Aiming the stake directly into her heart is the only mercy she can give the woman. 

“It’s time,” Klaus says to Elena, offering her his hand.

Caroline flashes to when they were young and human, before they had met, when rumors circulated through the village of the healer’s two sons, both bewitched by the same woman. Elena wears Tatia’s face, and Caroline wonders if her husband remembers the first girl he cared for.

Caroline accepts the hand that Elena ignores, taking her rightful place next to her husband. The moon above them hangs bright and full, and she takes a moment to appreciate her senses. The smell of the wet dirt under their feet, the feeling of his hand in hers. 

What will be different once they are wolves?

When the spell starts, breaking free of the moonstone at last, she can feel their nature as it itches to be free as well. The first stirrings of what Klaus was born as and what Esther transformed her into.

She sinks her teeth into the doppelganger, and the satisfaction that floods through her overpowers the bloodlust of the feed. Every mouthful brings them closer to completion, and she doesn’t have to look up to know that Klaus feels the same way.

His satisfaction is her own, the stretch of her senses as they combine with his. There is screaming, but that was to be expected, and it fades into the background.

Wolves at last. 

They are one, united in nature, bound by Esther’s spell that she cast in the handfasting at their wedding. All of the years they have passed as separate beings will be forgotten in the wake of this marriage of souls. 

Satisfaction is turned to pain when the young witch begins her spell, and the sight of Elijah making his way out of the forest only heightens the betrayal. The brother who turned against them, as though they had any other choice. As though he does not understand what they are, what they always been meant to be.

The spell renders her immobile, and when he plunges his hand into Niklaus’s chest to grab his heart, she feels his fingers around her own. “He is your brother!” she screams.

For all of Elijah’s words about family, he would destroy the last of them.

As though they are the ones who have broken their family apart, as though it was not Mikael.

“I didn’t bury them at sea,” Klaus tells him, gasping the words through his pain, “Their bodies are safe.”

Without their help, Elijah will never discovery the daggered bodies of their siblings. He will be alone in the world, truly alone, and if he murders them it will be nothing less than the fate he deserves.

Feet away, Caroline digs her palms into the ground and swears, “If you kill us, you’ll never find them.”

“I give you my word, brother,” Klaus says, another vow among the many they have made to each other.

She watches as Elijah’s face softens, realizing the magnitude of what is at risk for them. And he pulls Niklaus to his feet in a moment, gathering Caroline in his other arm before taking them to safety.

-x-

When the transformation finally takes place, the power of the moon calls to them too strongly to be denied. They shift simultaneously, taking the form they have been denied for so long. The power that runs through their veins is undeniable.

An unknowable length of time later, when they are satiated, they emerge from the woods to find Elijah waiting for them with fresh clothes and the bowl of blood from last night’s ceremony. Caroline drinks gratefully but cannot find it within herself truly trust him yet.

He feels the same way, most likely.

“How long has it been?” Klaus asks, accepting the clothes and tugging the pants over his human form.

The ghost of a smile flits over Elijah’s features, amused at how unconcerned they have been with whatever recent developments have occurred. “Two days,” he says, and Caroline tries to frame that into her mind.

“Shall we reunite our family, then?” Elijah asks at last.

Klaus grins at him from where he’s pulling a shirt on. She feels his joy at finding his brother, at the potential of what they have become. “We will be as we were always meant to,” he says, and Caroline reaches out for both of them, bringing them together in a hug. Despite her misgivings, it is good to have him back in their lives, and she has missed his presence. 

There is a solidarity in family, a sense of home.

The warm weather soaks into their skin. Caroline wonders how many miles they are from where Esther first performed her spells. The one that turned them into vampires, and the one that sealed her and Niklaus from their werewolf side.

She wonders how far they are from the site of their wedding. 

“A homecoming, for all of us,” she promises Elijah, who smiles at the idea.

-x-

The house that they find in Mystic Falls for all of them is larger even than the mansion in Chicago, although it has nothing on the compound in New Orleans. “I want everything to be perfect,” she says as she orchestrates the remodel.

They will all be together, even Finn, the treacherous bastard. Now that the spell he helped to completion has been ended, she can perhaps find it in herself to forgive him. 

“Elijah has undaggered them all ahead of schedule,” Klaus informs her, flipping through the swatches she was going to pick for the curtains. “I prefer the blue.”

“I was going to use the blue for Rebekah’s room, but we can use it for our own instead. Hers can be done in purple.” She dips forward and kisses him, unwilling to be bothered by Elijah’s meddling. He has waited long enough for his family, and she would not deny him this.

All of his siblings gathered under one roof, something that has not happened since the hunters cornered them. They should celebrate. A party, once the house has finally come together.

Stepping through the construction zone, she tells him of where the walls will go up and how each wing will be used. A library, a music room, and an art studio, of course. A few empty spaces to be made into offices for whatever use the others might have. She shows him the oak dining table that she had specially commissioned, designed to seat twenty. Hand in hand, she points out where everything in the dining room will go. “I’m trying to make a menu with each course modeled after each century we have lived through.” A progression of flavors and dishes that will lead them through the modern era.

“You’re happy like this,” Klaus says, as though he does not feel the same way.

Contentment rolls off of him in waves, compounding with hers. Every moment that they spend together is pure bliss, and she tells him so.

“We are together again. A family. When Mikael is dead, I will have everything I have ever wanted,” Caroline admits. 

He captures her cheek in his hand before moving forward to kiss her, pressing their lips together in a moment of passion. “I will ensure it for you, love. You will never question your happiness again.”

-x-

Niklaus fulfills his promise in the madness of the homecoming dance, and Caroline screams at him for his stupidity, pounding her fists against his chest. “You could have been killed!” she shouts, nails digging into his chest, tears streaming down her cheeks. The fear lodged in her throat softens at the sight of him, safe and whole in front of her.

“We will never be hunted again. I will not live that way again, and I will not let you either,” he tells her.

“You’re a fool,” she announces, and she cannot let him go unkissed for another moment. 

There was no plan in place; he merely took advantage of a situation that spiraled. His survival was a coin toss, and yet it is Mikael’s corpse that burns to ash. The children (and she doesn’t care how old the vampires among them are, compared to her family they are younger than she can imagine) lost control of their ace in the hole, and now they are left hopeless.

Whereas her family thrives, alive and well, under no further threats. They flourish, and it is more than Caroline has ever dared to hope for.

Tipping his head back and laughing, Klaus wraps his arms around her waist, bringing her ever closer. “I will always return to you, love. You never need to worry about that.”

Under normal circumstances, his words would soothe her, but there was a white oak stake. He has never come closer to death before in the entire millennium. 

“I forgot how nauseating the two of you could be,” Rebekah shouts from the kitchen, still spurned from seeing Stefan’s obsession with the doppelganger. 

Kol cackles, “I’m tempted to break all of the plates here just to drown it out.”

Caroline turns and takes a deep breath before reminding him, “I had those imported from Italy. If you break them, you’re paying the potter for his work and for the shipping.”

-x-

Having everyone together again fills the house with all kinds of noise. Finn is still an ass and leaves pretty much immediately to find Sage, but Rebekah, Kol, and Elijah all stay. Caroline isn’t dedicated to staying in Mystic Falls for too long, but for now it is the perfect place to be as they reacquaint themselves.

In time, they will travel and go their own ways. Such is the life that waits for them now that Mikael is no longer a threat.

Perhaps one day they will return to New Orleans again. In all her years, that is the truest home that Caroline has ever found.

Everything comes together, and even Elijah is not nearly as insufferable as he once was with his claims of nobility and honor. Or maybe it is just easier to handle, knowing that they are whole, that nothing is left to come for them.

“You have everything you have ever wanted,” Klaus points out to her one day as they take a long morning in bed.

Caroline twists, wrinkling the sheet wrapped around her in the process, and she waves off his answering laugh. “What more is there to want?”

Everything that they have worked for over the last thousand years has come to fruition. Their hybrid nature has been released, and the only wish that she still has to is explore that further with him. Klaus wants to make an army, of course, because he’s never content, but Caroline is fulfilled by the fact that they no longer have to run.

A family, a home. Her heart beats in synchronized harmony with her husbands. There is nothing more that she requires. Being able to take a breath without fear is more than enough.

Klaus dips towards her, palming her hip over the thin sheet, and he drags his lips from her jaw over to ear to where she can hear his steadying breaths. “You will always be enough,” he tells her, and surely he can feel the swell of her heart at his words.

-x-

They rediscover passions that they have not had time for in recent years, and she has missed Klaus as he paints her. The attention that he gives to his work is second to none. She tries to relax on the couch when he holds up a hand, tilting the canvas as he dabs his paintbrush in red. “Stay there, exactly there, and do not move,” Klaus says suddenly, eyebrows drawn together in concentration.

She holds the pose, listening to steady rhythm of Rebekah going through the cheer routine she’s trying to learn to fit in at the high school, and, further off, the music of the cars that drive down their road. In the backyard, the nest of birds that has taken up residence in the oak tree sing their birdsong. The Schubert opera that Klaus has put on fades into the background, the lieders drifting off with the song cycle, at least until she hears the front door swing open.

Kol pops in the doorway to study them briefly before asking, “Who did you throw in the dungeon?”

“I keep telling you, it’s not a dungeon,” Caroline dismisses him, pulling the blanket draped over the back of the couch over her form. She tilts her hand slightly when Klaus motions for it.

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Fine, then. Basement, whatever. Who’s locked down there?” Kol rolls his eyes, exasperated.

Klaus waves his paintbrush at his brother, dripping spots of paint that makes Caroline relieved she’d asked him to put down a drop cloth, “We haven’t taken anyone prisoner, and please refrain from looking at my wife when she isn’t fully dressed. Is there anyone in the basement, love?”

“You’re the one who leaves your studio door open,” Kol sputters indignantly.

“There’s no one in the basement,” Caroline announces. Surely this sort of thing doesn’t happen in other families.

Kol narrows his eyes and is quiet for a moment before declaring once more, “Well there’s got to be someone down there. I counted five heartbeats in the house before I got home. You two are here, Rebekah is practicing to be captain of the cheer squad, and Elijah is–”

“Right here, brother. Kol is correct, I count six heartbeats in the house now that he’s here,” Elijah announces, taking a seat behind Klaus’s canvas. “I don’t think you captured the light properly.”

“And I think that the audience should abstain from commentary before a work is ready for public viewing,” Klaus snaps. “I haven’t kidnapped anyone; what are you looking at me for?”

With a dramatic sigh, Caroline explains to her beloved husband, “Only because you’ve threatened to kidnap the doppelganger about three times a week since we’ve been here.”

Rebekah appears in the doorway next to Kol, saying, “In case anyone cares, I checked the basement since you lot were being so bloody loud about it. Empty of all lifeforms, kidnapped or not. I hear it, too.”

“Thank you, Rebekah,” Elijah tells her, making room on the sofa for her.

“The light doesn’t look nearly that orange. Too much red, Nik,” Rebekah says, ignoring how Klaus glares at her.

Caroline holds the blanket to cover herself up further as she sits up. “You know he doesn’t like them to be seen before he’s finished.” She strains her ears, counting the heartbeats. Five strong ones to equal those of them in the room, and one slightly softer. As though it’s coming from the basement.

If Rebekah’s already checked the basement, maybe it’s coming from the room upstairs. Caroline thinks of the house’s layout to realize that’s Finn’s room, which has been empty since he left.

“So if we’re all hearing the same six heartbeats but we agree there should only be five people in the house, where is the sixth one coming from?” Kol demands.

It’s a fair point.

Klaus holds up a finger and they all fall silent as he crosses the room. Every step is deliberate, and at last he stands in front of Caroline before dropping to his knees and pressing his ear to her stomach. “It’s coming from here, love,” he says, and his eyes are wild with an emotion she’s never seen before, gold bleeding into the blue iris.

“That’s impossible,” Caroline breathes. Her voice is barely a whisper.

“Vampires don’t get pregnant,” Kol announces, because he loves nothing more than wasting his breath.

With almost unbearable tenderness, Klaus takes her hand. His gaze stays on her stomach, the source of the sixth heartbeat. Now that Caroline knows what to listen for, her senses focus in, and she can tell that’s where it’s coming from, but she doesn’t dare believe it.

A strange silence permeates the room. A rarity, because Mikaelsons are many things, but quiet is not one of them. Elijah is the one to break it when he points out, “Neither of you are just a vampire anymore. Werewolves can have children.”

Caroline is a tangle of emotions, Klaus’s mixed in with her own, but above all there is an excitement that thrums between them. Disbelief twists through it, because this is surely as unfeasible as it’s ever been, but she wants to have faith. With this heartbeat between them, small and fluttering, she knows that it could happen.

The possibility of having a child is the only thing that Caroline still mourns about her human life. The only thing that remains of those that Esther took from her. 

“A child,” Klaus intones. His gazes, when it locks with her, is filled with an untamed heat.

“A child,” Caroline echoes, and something within her breaks open at the idea. In the past weeks, Klaus has pestered her by asking what more that she wanted, and she had no idea. It seemed that there was nothing more to want, anything else would have been impossible. This should be impossible, and yet.

Her hand grips his, and there is nothing that compares to the triumph that flows through their veins. Even the accomplishment of having their hybrid nature no longer denied to them now pales in comparison. 

Everything fades away like a camera’s focus changing, shifting until all that remains in their awareness is their linked hands resting on her stomach. Where their baby grows.

“I asked you a week ago what more there was to want from life,” Caroline says, her other hand lifting to trace Klaus’s jawline, running her fingers over the stubble she finds. “Only to find that you have given me an even greater desire, the very thing I have always wanted.”

A family. Their family, a child of their own.

He surges forward, capturing her lips with his, pressing her back into the couch. Caroline makes room for him, stifling a laugh at the sound of his siblings fleeing the room and the door subsequently slamming behind them following the escape. “I will paint you as a Madonna with child, the birth of Venus,” he says fervently, before pausing and taking a long moment to look into her eyes.

A millennium has passed between them, and this would be the dawn of a new era no matter what. Truly bonded, no longer cursed. They have committed atrocities in each other’s names for centuries, and they will do so again. Caroline is not naïve; she knows the truth of them in her bones.

This child will come into a family like no other, and it will be loved more fiercely than any that has come before it. Nothing has ever come between them and the goals they strive for.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plotwork of the Originals if Original!Caroline was Hope's mom.

When news reaches her of the doppelganger’s kidnapping, Caroline is flipping through a book for new mothers, reading that her child is the size of a plum or apricot. She looks up at the hybrid who has told her, one of many in Klaus’s new army, and she narrows her eyes as she realizes what’s happened.

Only Niklaus would take her request to leave this place and return home as a call to acquire as much doppelganger blood as possible before the move.

Enraged, she throws the book against the wall and tugs a pair of boots on. “And just where has he taken her this time?” she growls, checking her phone to make sure that she wasn’t supposed to be let in on this earlier and just missed it. No new calls or texts, so it’s something that Klaus has done of his volition.

“The hospital,” the hybrid answers. 

It’s not like Caroline is going to learn anything of consequence from the pregnancy book, but she’s still annoyed to have her reading interrupted. She storms out of the mansion, unsure of whether she’d prefer to find her husband or the doppelganger first, and it’s only when she realizes she’s being followed that she stops.

“I don’t need your assistance,” she snaps, turning to the hospital. The girl is human and will only be able to survive so much. Klaus can wait for her wrath.

The hybrid pauses mid-step, and then stutters out, “Klaus asked me to stay with you.”

Of course he did. And the sire bond will prevent this supernatural oddity from disobeying his direct orders. “Did he?” The question is rhetorical, because she’s already figured out the best way to leave unaccompanied. When the hybrid nods, scared and worried, Caroline sighs. 

Plunging her hand into the man’s chest, she rips his heart out freely. Only a few hours ago, she wouldn’t have been so careless. Klaus has the doppelgangers blood to make more, though, and he shouldn’t be so inconsiderate with his creatures as to instruct them to escort her through a town as mundane as Mystic Falls. Asking such a thing of one of them would be a death sentence.

-x-

Wrists bound on the hospital bed, skin pale, Elena asks, “What are you doing here?”

“Is that any way to speak to your rescuer?” Caroline quips, pulling the IV out and ignoring Elena’s wince.

“Why would you help me?” The girl is afraid of her, and why should she not be? The last time they saw each other, Elena was the human sacrifice to end their curse. Caroline was only too relieved to see her body crumple to the ground afterwards. It’s only natural that she’d worry about the Original’s motives.

The blood bag is half-full, so they have some time before the next of Klaus’s hybrids comes in to change it out for a new one. Or perhaps he sees attending to the doppelganger as a worthy enough task to do it himself. 

Caroline’s nose wrinkles at the thought. There is only one woman that he should be attending to if he is so concerned, and he had requested one of his minions to stay with her. Watching his face when he finds out about the present she’d left for him (the hybrid’s body, arranged to greet whoever finds it in a rude gesture) is going to be such fun. 

Something to look forward to. For now, she takes advantage of her moment alone with Elena. Not that she’s spent much time with the girl, but she knows enough to realize it’s rare to catch her without a Salvatore. In fact, she’s surprised that one of them hasn’t already come to save her. “Helping you is just a side effect from thwarting my husband’s plans.” She’d be just as annoyed if she found out that he remodeled the dining area without consulting her, perhaps more.

Scowl firmly in place, Elena asks, “How are you even married to that?”

Her voice drips with derision, as though she has room to judge.

“To what?” Caroline asks, winding the IV back up on its stand and ensuring not a drop spills out. She wants to thwart Klaus, yes, but that doesn’t mean the blood he’s already drawn should go to waste.

The girl, human and helpless, stares back at her, trying to find the words. So many people get away with leaving things unsaid, letting the implication speak for itself. Caroline finds that asking them to give voice to their concern helps them realize how ridiculous their issues are.

“He’s a serial killer” is what Elena decides on, and the hypocrisy is laughable.

With a shrug, Caroline responds, “So is your boyfriend. I’m afraid I’m not quite up to date on which brother you’re currently with, but no matter. Either of them would fit the description, I assure you. I’ve never watched Damon at work, but everyone knows of what he’s done. Stefan, on the other hand…” She trails off, watching how Elena’s eyes grow wide. “Let’s just say that I’ve witnessed a few of his massacres. When he kills, it’s more of an artform.”

She giggles at the private joke, the memory of how he and Klaus had once drained their victims in Chicago of blood. Not for food, but rather so that Niklaus could try it out as a medium for his paintings. 

Even without the macabre knowledge that Caroline has to draw from, Elena looks horrified all the same. “That’s different,” she protests, and maybe to her it is. “Stefan and Damon don’t want to kill.”

Perhaps Stefan resists his bloodlust now, but Caroline doesn’t buy that Damon foregoes murder for any reason other than out of desire for the girl in front of her. “Is it better to be with someone who embraces who they are, who is completely comfortable in their own skin? Or to be with a man at war with himself, constantly wondering which side will win?”

“I’m only with them when they’re good,” Elena spits, and Caroline takes note of the plural pronoun that she uses.

Looks like she lost her bet concerning which brother the doppelganger would go with. Kol has won if she’s chosen both of them, and he’s going to be insufferable about it. 

Humming, Caroline sits on the edge of the hospital bed. The girl is so young, so changeable. “You truly believe that such definitive lines can be drawn between good and evil. I almost envy your naivety. If you continue to look at world through such deluded eyes, you will never see its reality. You will never know true devotion.”

“At least I’m not loyal to a psychopath,” Elena hisses, and the girl really must need vampire guards to stay alive if she’s insane enough to say such a thing to Caroline.

“Do you call this action loyalty, then?” Caroline asks, motioning to the small dot of blood that has risen from where she removed the IV. She hasn’t taken the restraints off yet, but this conversation is growing tiresome. Perhaps better to free her and be done with it.

Elena hesitates, suddenly aware that she’s actively antagonizing the only person who can free her. 

“I understand that you have a limited perspective, but try to keep in mind that I have been with my husband for more than a thousand years. Our goals do not always align, and this will not be the first time we have not agreed. Still, I love him, all of home. Even his violence, his arrogance. The traits that cause you to see him as a monster are just pieces of the man I love.” Caroline watches as Elena absorbs the information, the fear that still lingers in her eyes, and she takes pity on the girl.

“Why, sweetheart, I didn’t know you felt so strongly,” Klaus drawls from behind them, smug as ever.

Caroline turns to face him, eyebrows raised. A hybrid was good enough for her, but the doppelganger requires his personal attention? They’ll have words about his priorities later.

He continues, taking in the scene, frowning when he notices the blood bag is no longer hooked up. “I thought I’d tasked someone with accompanying you,” he finally comments, lifting his voice at the end, transforming it into a question.

Reaching into her purse, Caroline tosses him the hybrid’s heart. “You did.”

Elena gasps, reminding Caroline of her presence once more, and she goes to work on the restraints, unwrapping them carefully. They’re pitiful and thin, but still more than enough to keep a human sufficiently trapped. 

“Oh come now, let’s not have a lover’s spat in public,” Klaus requests with a smile, dropping the heart on the floor. She can tell he’s annoyed at her interference but is unwilling to discuss it now.

“You’re right,” she agrees easily enough, checking to make sure that nothing else is keeping Elena bound to the bed. That taken care of, she stands and links one of her arms through her. “Let’s go somewhere a little more private then. Shall we?”

She doesn’t give him the opportunity to answer, dragging him out the door with her as she goes.

Honestly, if the doppelganger doesn’t make a run for it, it’s her own fault.

-x-

When they get home, she doesn’t waste a moment before going into their closet and dragging out the largest suitcase she can find. Klaus is going off on some inane tangent about his plans, the things he wanted to do, and yet he never manages says anything compelling about why should wouldn’t be included in them. When she points it out as she throws a selection of her favorite dresses on the bed, he has the nerve to scoff.

“I assumed that you wouldn’t mind. We are, after all, going to leave the area soon enough.” He says it with a smirk, because they’ve been hanging around teenagers for too long. Caroline might still look like one, but the sycophantic attitude that the Mystic Falls gang has makes her want to stake them all.

She might leave Stefan alive, as a favor. Rebekah would be bitter and bring it up at family events like Christmas just to sour the mood. Even Klaus might pout about it. 

Retreating to the closet, she ignores whatever other excuses that come to his mind. Honestly, the nerve of him. She asked him to stop, to leave with her. She wants to go away, to build a home, to start their family, and he takes it as a last call for doppelganger blood.

“I thought you would thank me. I am creating an army who can protect our child,” he’s saying when she tunes back in after selecting a few shoe boxes. 

A few favorites are all she needs to bring now. They can have the house boxed up and shipped over once they’ve settled in New Orleans. 

“You are creating more bloodshed that will surround our child. I think I proved earlier that your guards are not as unbeatable as you might have thought,” she points out, passing him a stack of shoe boxes. If he’s going to hang around while she takes care of packing, he might as well help.

He looks appropriately unimpressed. “I would think, love, that the inability to overpower an original hybrid would not actually count as a mark against them. Particularly when they can’t be expected to fight back against you. They are sired to me, after all. You can make some of your own creation if you’d like to even the scales.” Which is the exact opposite of what she’s trying to get at, and he knows it.

“As thoughtful as that might be, I’m tempted to go spill all of the doppelganger blood that I so carefully took care of getting out of the hospital intact.” She grabs a few pairs of boots, grateful that they have multiples sets of luggage to use.

Klaus looks over the clothes that she’s spread on the bed and dips back in the closet to grab one of her favorite dresses, short and black and tight. “Why don’t you bring this?”

She glares at him and zips up a duffel bag. “Because I’m pregnant, and that isn’t going to fit for the next several months.”

He doesn’t say another word, just places the hanger back up. Keeping his tone light, he comments, “You’re more bothered by this than I’d expected.”

Finally, they’ve arrived at the crux of the matter. Caroline moves away from the bags in front of her and thinks about approaching him before moving instead to the dresser. “I tell you that I want to leave this place. Our child should not grow up surrounded by violence, and you agree, or so you said. We make plans to return to New Orleans, to rebuild our home and create a life. Only for you to turn around to continue the exact type of violence that I asked for you to stop,” she grinds out, rifling through drawers seemingly at random. 

His answering smile is pained. “As I said, I am creating hybrids for our child’s protection. And what was that which you said to the Gilbert girl, that you loved all of me? Even my violence.”

She whirls around and throws the first thing that she lays her eyes on, a ring dish that he brought back from a trip to Italy for her. It shatters just to the left of his shoulders, and he doesn’t flinch. “You told me that it would stop. How ridiculous that I would believe you.”

Even the small bit of remorse that plays its way across his features doesn’t make her feel vindicated. 

“I am leaving for New Orleans in the morning,” she informs him. “Since you have decided it is unnecessary to keep your word, please don’t feel that you need to come with me. Stay here, play general to your armies. You’ve been having such fun.”

A growl rips through his chest, and she doesn’t bother to dignify it with a response, although she feels the hurt that ripples through him at her words. She thinks for a brief moment of apologizing – he would never put their child in danger. Hybrids are a measure of protection to him.

She thinks about it, until he says to her something that she’s never been told in a millennium. 

“You cannot go alone. I will not allow it.”

For a brief moment, she thinks of grabbing something else, but she restrains herself. “You will not _allow_ me?” she hisses, eyes flashing. “My apologies for not realizing that this child and I are just pawns in this game for you. You’re right; I should keep quietly to myself. Would you prefer for me to stay at home and darn your socks while you go out and create enemies that we need to protected from?”

Klaus realizes his mistake, but he buckles down instead of apologizing. “I meant, love, that we do not know this child’s potential. It could be dangerous for you to go alone. Let’s stay another week, get our affairs in order, and we can leave this all behind.”

Her fingers extend into claws, piercing her palms before she notices and retracts them. His eyes flash golden at the scent of fresh blood.

His hubris is so great, that he would ask her to stay so that he can finish his plans. She laughs before announcing, “I’ve already made plans. You were informed of them, or have you forgotten?” At this point, her packing is no longer prioritized. She gathers items indiscriminately, continuing, “And I would not be going alone. Rebekah is entertained enough by the quarterback, and Kol is still extracting revenge on the elder Salvatore for attempted murder, but Elijah said he would come with us. If you wish to wait a week before joining, then so be it.” 

If he comes a week after, he can be expected to find his own bed instead of sharing hers.

-x-

In the morning, she throws a few blood bags in the cooler for the road and brings the rest of her luggage downstairs. Kol watches her with interest from the couch because he’d been home to overhear her conversation (if it could be called that) with Klaus. “I’d offer to help,” he says, the words laden with faked sympathy, “but did you know that people watch other people on TV? It’s quite popular nowadays. They call it reality when it’s anything but.”

Caroline thinks wistfully of how quiet the decades were while he was daggered.

“I’ll miss you,” Rebekah says, passing over a second cooler filled with human food. Since they don’t know what the baby needs, her diet now includes prenatal vitamins and fish three heavy in omega-3 in addition to her preferred O-positive.

“We’ll let you know what it’s like when we get in. Probably stay in a hotel the first night and then figure out what needs to be done to get the Abattoir back into running condition.”

There will be a lot to do once they’re in the city, but Caroline likes to have a project to busy herself with. She smiles at Rebekah, pretending to look forward to the tasks, attempting to lift herself out of the foul mood she’s been in since Klaus left their bedroom last night. 

The only thing she has to be thankful for is that Kol has the good sense to not bring it up with their other siblings milling about. He’d do best to keep quiet; she knows where the daggers are stored.

Elijah is doing a run through to ensure he packed all the necessary chargers for everything, and every now and then he comes back into the living room with a cord coiled around his arm. Once the bags have been loaded into the car, they can start the drive. Caroline has already prepared a playlist that will surely have Elijah cursing her taste in music.

“Send pictures, and let me know if there’s anything I can ship down to you. I’ll come down in a few months, when things are more settled here,” Rebekah tells her, and Caroline resists the urge to ask how she’s going to settle down with a high school quarterback who is determined to remain mortal.

Instead, she smiles brightly and nods before glancing at the clock. The original goal was to leave Mystic Falls by nine thirty, but they probably won’t be on the road by ten. 

“I believe I’ve prepared everything,” Elijah says, slipping a cable into a suitcase and zipping it back up. “Where is Niklaus?”

Caroline’s hand clenches around the strap of her duffel bag, but she keeps her face impassive.

“Right here, brother,” Klaus announces, coming down the stairs with an overnight back in hand. He keeps his gaze steadfastly locked on Elijah, not meeting his wife’s eyes. “Are we ready?”

All the bags loaded into the trunk and all of their goodbyes given, Klaus snatches the car keys from Elijah’s hand and waves his older brother to sit in the back. Caroline opens the passenger side door and listens to them argue, knows that Klaus’s unstoppable force will win out over Elijah’s immovable object.

When they actually get moving, Klaus doesn’t say anything bad about her playlist (even when it starts with On the Road Again), just reaches over and places his hand on hers.

-x-

Their first day in the city that they once called home, Klaus brings her a goblet of blood and a plate of beignets for breakfast in bed. He kisses her sweetly, an apology, and licks into her mouth to chase the metallic tang of the blood and sweetness of the powdered sugar.

She does not ask why he came with them, because she already knows the answer. She can feel his regret, his sorrow, the hope for a new beginning. “I never want to be away from you,” he says, pushing the blankets back and pulling her closer. “You are the most important thing in my life; that has never been in question. The only thing that I want in this life is your happiness.”

It is a lie, but a well-meaning one.

Niklaus wants castles and kingdoms, to play the knight in shining armor with clanging swords and shields. He was a sight to behold in the middle ages, his long hair peeking out from under his helmet, her favor tied to him for everyone to see. They have different dreams, but they value each other more than anything else. Caroline knows he would not have given up an army for anyone else.

“You are my happiness. The only thing I want is to make a home for our child,” she tells him, watching with rapt attention as he licks powdered sugar from her fingers. His tongue swirls around the digit, gold bleeding into his blue irises, and she responds in kind. 

By the time they venture out of the hotel, Caroline leans into him, continuously drawn to him and unwilling to deny it now that he has redeemed himself and sought her forgiveness. Elijah has gone off to attend to business of his own, so they stroll down Bourbon Street in an attempt to relearn how the city has changed in their absence. 

Mikael did not burn it all to the ground, but Caroline remembers that day, the furious squeal of the tires as Niklaus took them away. How Rebekah sobbed brokenly into her shoulder, and the scent of ash clung to them for days. She did not know if they would ever return, but the past century gone by and Mikael’s death have led them back to the same cobblestone streets they used to wander.

Jazz singers and musicians line the street, and Klaus lifts her hand for her to spin under his arm in time with the saxophone notes.

The act reminds her of the parties they threw here, the dances they learned and performed in ballrooms, eyes following their every move. “We should throw a ball,” she says, already day dreaming of how it will come together. For Christmas, perhaps.

“You just want an excuse to dance with me,” he teases her, obliging by lifting his arm again to send her twirling out. His eyes are bright, shining golden in the sun, and she would forgive him anything.

Elijah calls with news of a plot against them, something that they might as well squash while they’re here. A witch by the name of Jane-Anne Devereaux has something up her sleeve, or so she claims, so Caroline stops by the first fortune teller they see for a locating spell.

Witches in New Orleans sell their trade, able to trick the tourists into believing in fates and the winds of change, but their magic tricks are not what she’s interested in today. This one is more knowledgeable than most, only having to look at them for a moment before whispering, “The Original hybrids.”

Recognition is not always something she prefers, but right now it is no matter. It means the woman will be more aware of what they will punish her with if she does not do as they ask, but she apparently fears someone else more than her. “The vampires don’t allow magic here,” she says, as though New Orleans is some municipality ruled under an iron fist.

“We’re the vampires here, love, and we’re asking you for a quick locator spell. So unless you have any higher ups we can speak to, do the spell and we’ll be on our way,” Klaus requests with a grin.

The old woman looks around the street, making sure they are unobserved, before she tells them, “You would need to ask Marcel.”

Caroline’s world comes to life in vibrant colors at the words.

-x-

Karaoke. On the stage, he is a commanding presence. His voice takes well to classic rock, even though she’d first taught him the scales seated next to her on the harpsichord. “He’s brilliant,” she whispers to Klaus, squeezing his hand in excitement and anticipation.

He hears what she doesn’t say. _He’s here. He’s alive._

As they’d walked from the fortune teller’s table to the bar, Klaus had been a flurry of questions that she couldn’t begin to unpack. Why had Marcel never sought them out? How long has he had New Orleans in the palm of his hand? What kind of witches would merely accept a vampire as ruler?

Good questions, and they will answer them in time. For now, Caroline is filled with joy after receiving news that she had thought impossible. The man they had raised from childhood is on the stage before them, imposing and strong and a force to be reckoned with. He’s taken after Klaus in that way, she supposes, but she cannot find it in herself to take issue.

The song comes to an end, and Caroline bursts into applause loud enough for him to finally notice them.

“Klaus and Caroline Mikaelson,” he introduces them, looking them over, assessing their arrival, their intent, before a smile cracks over his face. “My mentors, my saviors.” He pulls them both in for a hug, and Caroline flings her arms around him. Looking at Klaus, he acknowledges, “My sire.”

“Marcellus,” Klaus greets him, but there is something guarded about the way that he says it. 

She looks back over to Marcel, whose smile is strained at the edges. He holds them at a distance, and even as he discusses the intricacies of his ruling (because there is no other word for the grip he has on the city), she hears every lie of omission. A weapon for learning of magic nearby, punishments for those who do not follow instructions, and when Jane-Anne dies at their feet, Caroline thinks that perhaps he took after Klaus too thoroughly.

“Not to interfere,” she starts, having just finished a chapter of how allowing children their independence is key to building their confidence, “but we did want to know what she wanted from us.”

“I can find out anything you need,” Marcel assures them, but Caroline looks into Klaus’s eyes and wonders if the man before them can still be called an ally.

-x-

Elijah watches her nervously, and she nearly flinches under his gaze. The request that she’s come to him with will be more than she’s ever asked for before. It has the potential of breaking apart the family that he has always sought to join together.

She wouldn’t ask this of him if it wasn’t important. 

The linking spell is dangerous. Sophie Devereaux is a liability, because she is a human. A witch, yes, but a human with limitations and weaknesses and a mortal lifeline that could be snuffed out at any time. When they were first linked, it had seemed like a simple thing, something that could only assist them if so many witches were out to put her child in danger.

Caroline was a fool to not think further ahead, to suss out where the woman’s true loyalties lay.

“I need to know that we have a plan,” she tells him, folding her hands on her lap as she takes a seat.

He glances to the door in a way that looks like a flinch. “Has Niklaus not told you?” he asks, unsure of how to move forward.

“I know of that plan,” Caroline assures him. They keep nothing from each other, guarding secrets and family alike. This act of secrecy will be an anomaly, and she knows even before she asks it of him that it is a betrayal. Of Klaus, of Elijah. Of the child that she will bring into the world. “We need a plan in case of emergency, true emergency. I need to know that my daughter will be safe, regardless of what happens.”

He moves in front of the desk, taking the seat next to her and reaching over for her hand in a manner that should feel comforting. Her stomach rolls instead. “You must know that I will protect my niece at all costs. We all will.”

Under nearly all possible circumstances, she believes that wholeheartedly. There is only one of them that she doubts, and only in the most extreme of situations.

She squeezes his hand, because Elijah will be the most devoted uncle the world has ever seen. With all that he has done in the name of family, she trusts him with her child’s life. That has never been in question. Which is why he is the only one that she can ask this of. “Will you put her first? Whatever we encounter, however the next few months unfold, will you prioritize her above all else?”

“What are you concerned about?” he asks of her, and she knows she’s making him worry. He’ll call Klaus over if she doesn’t get ahold of herself.

The thought only makes her more frantic.

“Swear it to me,” she begs of him, grabbing his hands. Caroline knows that her desperation must be obvious, but she will not rest if they can’t resolve this. Preparation is the first step to follow through.

With a steadying breath, he promises, “I give my word.”

Elijah’s word is his bond. He lives and dies by it. 

“Caroline, tell me. What are you worried about?” He keeps his voice down, a safeguard that she appreciates but finds unnecessary. She can’t hear anyone in the house except for them. Klaus is attending to business in the French Quarter, and Rebekah left earlier without saying why.

To give herself some comfort, she thinks of how unlikely it is that it should ever come down to this precaution. Surely, it will not come to pass. “If anything should happen where you are forced to make the choice between my daughter’s life and my own, I need you to choose her. Do you understand?” She needs to know that her child will always be protected, no matter the cost.

“Niklaus…” he whispers, drifting off.

He doesn’t need to say anything more. She already knows what she is asking him.

Klaus would never forgive him. Presented with the choice, they both know he would choose Caroline. He is going to be a wonderful father; she has fallen even deeper in love with him as she watches him embrace the role. He loves their child already, but she knows he would choose his wife of a thousand years over the potential that they have created.

“It won’t come to that,” Elijah says, but he does not know. None of them do. 

She squeezes his hands, trying to impart to him some of the comfort that he has given to her. 

“You can’t tell him about this. Only if… If it comes to it, tell him that it’s what I wanted. He’ll need to know. To understand that it wasn’t your decision, but mine. I need her to be safe.” Her voice wobbles as she says it, because the idea of not seeing her child grow is the most heartbroken she’s been since the Hunter’s Curse first clouded Niklaus’s vision.

Steady and resolute, he vows to her, “She will be.”

He knows what he is promising, that he could endure Niklaus’s wrath for the rest of their unnatural lives by accepting her terms, and he agrees in spite of it. This is why she has come to Elijah, why he is the only option for this. He will protect his family at all costs.

Caroline is a beloved sister-in-law, and he would defend her against anyone other than his blood. Most days, she likes those odds. She is indebted to his predisposition for family.

“Thank you,” she whispers, grateful beyond words.

-x-

For a terrible and fleeting moment, when Klaus throws open the doors to the church, Caroline is flooded with relief. Relief that is leaves her just as suddenly when the witches focus their power on him, slamming him into the wall behind her. He roars, terrible and fearsome. Countless bodies have met their end at his hands, but he is trapped by this coven of three. They both are, she realizes with despair, and she grips the alter so tightly that it splinters under her fingers.

The moonlight rings that were created with his blood have weakened them both, and she has no idea how they’re going to get out of this situation.

Klaus’s fear leaks into hers and hers into his, their link creating a toxic feedback loop that Caroline is only pulled out of with each new contraction. They’re closer together now, and this is not how she wanted her daughter to enter the world. Surrounded by danger, both parents unable to protect her from these harvest witches, forced into complicity.

His rage is palpable and impotent, as useless as it is strong. 

It is a ridiculous thought, but she wishes he was at least pinned to the wall in front of her instead of the one behind. The sight of him would be welcome, but perhaps it would make everything worse. Having to see him witness this, powerless to stop it, the naked fear and fury that his face would show.

Bad enough to feel it course through her veins.

“Push,” Genevieve tells her, and Caroline would strangle her if her arms weren’t restrained by their spell. From here on out, any woman who makes eyes at her husband gets slaughtered on sight.

“Push,” she commands again, but it’s too soon.

It isn’t time, Caroline thinks wildly even as she knows the truth. Not like this. They were going to protect her. They are the strongest creatures in existence, and if they cannot stop this from happening, what does that make them? Unable to save that which they love the most. Another contraction, stronger this time, washes over her and leaves her gasping.

“Niklaus!” Caroline sobs, knows that it makes it worse for him, doesn’t know what else to do, who else to plead with. He has always protected her, and to be without it is a vulnerability she has never known.

“I’m here, love,” he chokes out, and she knows that he only manages the thread of calm in the words in an effort to comfort her. Trapped, bound, and still he thinks of her comfort.

Their child is coming in spite of Caroline’s efforts, and her body gives itself over to labor without her permission, bearing down as she feels the baby begin to crown. Tears leak down her face, and she cries out with the effort of giving birth. Where is their family when they are most needed?

She would give her own life for this child, but she thought it would be sacrificing herself for child’s life. She thought that the baby would be taken care of by family, growing up surrounded by love. What will they do to her?

That is how their daughter comes into the world, delivered into the arms of witches who would only bring her harm. They are powerful enough to overwhelm even the strongest members of the Original family, and every fear Caroline has harbored over this pregnancy has come true in a matter of hours.

“Let me hold her,” she whispers when she sees their baby cradled by Monique. A strange hope grips her, that the birth of such a child will be a magical enough event that they will not need a sacrifice.

Her arms are still bound by the spell, but surely they would not be so cruel to deny a mother the chance to hold her first child. 

There is a pause as the witches look amongst themselves, deciding, and the last thing that Caroline is aware of is a hissed Latin word before Klaus screams out in agony and she feels the cool touch of a blade to her throat. The world spins when she falls off the alter.

-x-

“How did this happen?” Elijah asks, and Caroline twists to look over to see him standing at the entrance to the church. The doors are thrown open behind him, the same as when Niklaus arrived, and the memory bowls over her as she remembered what happened, why she’s waking up from her most recent death with an empty womb.

Klaus’s hands in her hair still when he feels her shift, and he doesn’t answer Elijah’s question, instead telling her, “You’re still healing.”

“Our baby,” she begins, unwilling to ask, needing to know all the same.

“I only woke a minute before you. You need time to recover.” There is loss in his voice, and she looks to Elijah and knows that he doesn’t have answers for her either. 

Time is not something they have the luxury of any longer. Using the alter for support, she pulls herself up on unsteady legs and ignores the hand that Elijah offers to her. The cemetery must be the place they’ve prepared for the sacrifice. Hallowed ground, magic permeating the earth, and she will not let her daughter meet her end at the point of a cursed blade.

“How?” Elijah asks, and Caroline looks around the destroyed church to see the wreckage that has happened so recently. She and Klaus are no exception, clothes torn from fighting, blood dried on her neck, her hair matted with sweat.

“We were bested,” Klaus snarls, and she aches to go to him, to comfort him. 

Even when pinned against a wall, barred from rescuing her, he had attempted what little comfort that he could give her. He deserves the same, but every moment that passes is another that their child is in danger. “They took her, but there is still time. We can still save her,” she announces, settling a hand on his shoulder. 

Klaus stands, biting into his wrist as he does so and holding it out to Elijah. “You’ve been bitten.”

Caroline looks at her brother-in-law, seeing how labored his breathing is, noticing the weakness he carries with him for the first time. Elijah drinks gratefully, and when he pulls back, blood still on his lips, he says, “Let’s get your daughter back.”

-x-

The maze of the cemetery that they find themselves in is baffling, but Caroline’s heart stops when she sees Genevieve with a knife poised over their daughter’s body. Before she can process her horror enough to think through it, screaming out a wordless cry, she sees Elijah fling a vase into the tableau of witches born from her nightmares.

The vase shatters, and the moment devolves into a war.

Caroline sprints towards the baby and grunts when she’s slammed into a wall. She had plenty of time to think about what type of revenge would be back to take on Genevieve, and she isn’t going to let any part of it slip away. When the woman hesitates, pausing to make sure that Elijah hasn’t killed Monique, Caroline shoves a bloody wrist to the woman’s mouth.

She’ll die twice over, and vengeance will be all the sweeter for it.

Every moment is a blur, and the only thing that calls her focus is the small screaming child at the center of it all. Born into a life of violence, her birthright is nothing more than the enemies that they have passed onto her. When one of the witches finally gets their hands back on the knife and raises it, Caroline screams, trapped by a spell, terrified of watching what will come next.

The woman is ripped to shreds by whatever was thrown at her, and she falls to the ground, knife still in hand. The moment of respite is proved to be short-lived when Marcel darts into the fray and grabs their child before anyone is aware of what’s happened.

“Klaus!” Caroline screeches, his name torn from her throat, coming out as a more of a guttural sound than an identifiable word. He hears her all the same, sprinting out of the cemetery to follow their daughter.

-x-

Even when their child has been returned to them, even as Caroline stares into small blue eyes and holds her in her arms for the first time, she knows that they aren’t safe. The wolves will weaken them with the daylight rings, and their baby will be in constant danger for as long as she stays in New Orleans.

“Why can’t we protect her?” All she has wanted since they first learned of her pregnancy was to keep her child safe and unscathed through any means necessary. It was why she asked Niklaus to set his dream of hybrids aside and focus on their family. They have lived through quiet years before, years without consequence or adversaries, and yet she gave birth to their child trapped on a church alter, forced to deliver her into a world that wishes her harm. 

Klaus stands over her shoulder. He’s stayed with them since he brought their daughter back, passing her over wordlessly even as he hovered. “We’re going to find a way,” he promises her, but they’ve already spoken with Elijah. 

Rebekah is driving in to meet them soon, and Caroline will have to watch her child be taken from her a second time. She isn’t even a full day old.

The items that Caroline selected so painstakingly for the nursery have been picked over and packed away into a diaper bag. She’s written instructions for some things and included one of the books for raising children during their first year. Two letters have been placed into the front flap, one from each of their daughter’s parents. 

“She needs a name. We never… We never talked about a name.” She looks down at the baby in her arms, traces a finger over her soft cheek. She sees something of herself in the slope of her nose, the hairline, but the eyes remind her entirely of Klaus.

At one point, months before, they had traded barbs when Klaus had tried teasing her, saying he might want to name their daughter after one of the various harlots who’d thrown herself at him over the last thousand years. He’d stopped when Caroline had threatened to spear him through the shoulder with a fire poker at the mention of Aurora. 

“Renee,” he suggests, and she blushes to remember that it was one of the aliases she first used while they traveled in order to keep Mikael none the wiser of their whereabouts. 

“Jaquelyn. Freya,” she tries, but it doesn’t sound right on her tongue and she’s relieved when Klaus shoots it down. Too weighty. She wants a small name for their small child, not the weight of legacy.

He leans down to kiss the top of Caroline’s head, followed by their daughter’s. “Candice.”

Wrinkling her nose, Caroline shakes her head, trying to think of something that will fit. “Hope,” she finally whispers, reaching up for his hand. “Elijah has said since we found out about her that she is our family’s greatest hope. She was so impossible I didn’t even know to hope for her.”

“Hope Violet,” he whispers, reaching over to touch their daughter’s hand. “Hope Violet Mikaelson.”

The name sounds right, and she looks at her daughter and imagines her growing one day into a woman, carrying the name they have given her all the while.

“Why Violet?” It’s beautiful, and it fits in a way she hadn’t expected, but she doesn’t know why.

He grins, almost bashful in a way that he almost never is. “You wore violets at our wedding. They symbolize true, everlasting love,” he says after a long moment, and he wipes away the tears that spring to her eyes. 

She presses a hand to her mouth to keep from crying, both at how deeply she loves him and over the realization that giving their daughter to Rebekah will break her heart all over again. “I love it,” she chokes out. “I can’t go with you to give her to Rebekah. I know she’ll care for her; I know they’ll be safe, but I can’t watch her be taken from me. Not today, not again.”

Maybe if they had more time, if she could spend a week with their child, with Hope, she could do it. Or maybe that would just make it even more difficult.

Pressing his cheek to hers, he says, “Bekah will love her like her own. We will make this world safe for our daughter, and then she will return to us.”

His words only make her clutch Hope to her chest more tightly, because no amount of time like this would be enough, would ever be able to prepare to send her away. “We have to,” she says simply, because there isn’t a decision to be made. There will only be plans to follow.

-x-

One would think that after more than a millennium, the world would run out of surprises. That is not to be, though. Beyond the child that they would have thought impossible only a year ago, their family is meant to grow in number once more. This time, in a new way.

“You have a sister I’ve never met?” she asks incredulously. Freya was supposed to have died by plague, Esther’s firstborn, perished before she could meet any of her siblings with the exception of Finn.

A pity, as Finn is, by and large, the worst.

Klaus throws his hands in the air, clearly as exasperated by the subject as she is. “She claims that there is a curse on the firstborns in the family, that my mother struck a deal with her sister. Who is, by the way, apparently insane!” 

The news trickles in slowly, processing the information in bits until she’s piercing the couch’s upholstery with her claws. “The firstborns of the family,” she manages through clenched teeth.

He’s crossed the room to kneel in front of her, holding her hands in his. “No harm will come to our daughter, I swear it. Freya knows of her existence, the danger she is in, and she is searching for a way out. This bargain of my mother’s making will have no bearing on Hope’s life.” 

The reassurance doesn’t help, because all that she can think is that they have a new enemy, apparently more powerful of a witch than they have ever dealt with before. The harvest girls who pinned her down, who gathered her child into their arms for sacrifice, would look like charlatans trying their hand at parlor tricks to what they have learned of Dahlia.

“I have the worst in-laws,” Caroline says, because how could she not? Niklaus’s father chased them across the earth, hunting them until fear was all they knew. Esther tried to play remorseful, but the only things that she regretted was Niklaus’s hybrid nature, the vampiric forms she had given them, and their binding that resulted from the handfasting at their wedding.

Ironic, as those were the only things that Caroline will ever be grateful to her for.

Now there is a new branch of the family, however small, determined to sink her magic into their daughter and take her power for herself. Freya talks of Dahlia as the first witch, the one who had given Esther the ability to have children. While Caroline would always be thankful for her husband, she cannot say that she feels any sense of appreciation for the woman who would trap Hope.

Still, though. A new sibling, a new ally to work with. A witch who wants to fight for her family.

The deck is not quite stacked, but they are creating an imbalance. The Original family, coming together in a united front at last. Klaus is as dedicated to the cause as she is, rounding up old friends and calling in favors to determine ho they can best help.

Fatherhood has grown on him. No longer is he a man with a child, but a man who will fight to protect his daughter, who will bear his family’s burdens to help overcome them.

-x-

“I’m not going to harm you,” Marcel says, but she flinches backwards even with his assurances.

The child that rode from his half-brother’s funeral with him, the child they loved. The child that she grieved for long after they’d left the city. He has become Niklaus’s tormentor. Rebekah has always believed the best of him since they have returned, and Caroline had wanted to see that as well. The bites that he landed on Kol and Elijah, the blade shoved into Niklaus’s chest. Evidence that she cannot ignore, will never be able to look past.

Keeping Niklaus alive is no mercy, but he has not realized the action will buy them time.

How long will her husband be condemned to this? Only long enough for her to do the impossible. An antivenom for Elijah and Kol, a cure for Rebekah’s cursed wound, and the antidote to Freya’s poison. 

“We loved you. We would have given you everything,” she stutters out. “You were our son once.”

She does not think she could see that boy in him even if she tried, so removed is he.

His face hardens at the reminder. “They’ll never love anyone who isn’t one of them. The Original family does not concern themselves with others. Blood is the only thing that has ever mattered to them, be it food or family.” Seething, he can barely restrain his rage, and this power is so new to him. There is so much he has to learn about control.

“I am not their blood, but I am as much of a Mikaelson as you once were. By choice, by bond. I will not see them crumble before me.”

She tracks his movements with watchful eyes, noting how he doesn’t move towards her again. Her recoil must have upset him, because she still somehow matters. Instead, he takes a step back in a gesture of faith and goodwill, trying to allow her space.

If her family’s survival did not depend solely on her, she does not know if she would have challenged him. As it stands, she straightens her back and says, “If Kol and Elijah die, he will never forgive you, and I will not ask it of him.” To say nothing of her own forgiveness. Eternity is long, but she cannot imagine moving forward from here.

“I don’t need his forgiveness. I don’t need him,” Marcel snarls. 

Floors below, Niklaus is in agony, and she is the one tasked with freeing him. With freeing all of them. 

The only thing that stands between her and his freedom is the man who was once their son, who now wields power that he does not understand. Power that has a hold over him.

Unwilling to look away, to expose a potential weakness, she faces him as she takes a step back. He had said that he would not hurt her, but her words about Niklaus will not be forgotten, and she cannot make herself trust him. “I won’t let you hold him like this for forever.” A warning, a threat. A promise. She will return, and she does not know if she will find it within herself to be merciful.

For the first time since she has laid eyes on him tonight, he softens. She watches how he leans forward to go to her, before stalling the movement. “You could stay,” he offers. “You and Hope. We could rule New Orleans, Caroline. Mother.”

He whispers the word, the word that she has waited for him to call her since their return. There was a time where she would have forgiven him anything, but not now, not this.

There is a critical error in his proposal that she cannot ignore, and her lips purse before she informs him, “Niklaus is the one who wanted a kingdom. I have only ever wanted a family.”

In a flash, she flees the compound. There is much to be done before their plan can be put into action.

-x-

When she gathers Hope in her arms (her miracle, the girl who she must provide a home and a life for, the only thing that has kept her sane through the past five years), she takes a moment to hold her close, lifts her a bit higher on her hip. Listening to her heartbeat, human and fragile and strong.

They do not live a normal existence, but Caroline tries to carve out what little of it that she can manage. Stories of the family that will be returned, told in between trips far and wide to secure the necessary ingredients to their cures.

Klaus would be so proud of their child. Her resilience is remarkable, though Caroline suspects much of it is due the fact that this is the only life she has ever been exposed to. She is quick to laugh, cautious of new people, and every day she asks for more art supplies. Caroline sees so much of Klaus in her. The slope of his nose, the blue of his eyes, the melody of his laughter. She knows that she is biased, but she truly cannot imagine a more perfect little girl. 

Caring for her is the easiest thing that Caroline has ever done.

“They’re going to like me, right?” Hope asks, tucked in bed after a bedtime story of how they’d watched Prince Arthur’s wedding to Katherine of Aragon. She heard only the majesty of their wedding, nothing of their marriage or the subsequent tragedy that would befall them both.

“Who, sweetheart?” Caroline brushes a lock of strawberry blonde hair behind Hope’s ear and inhales the scent there. Her strawberry shampoo, the watercolors that stain her nail beds.

Hope slouches, sinking further under the covers. “Your family,” she whispers at last. 

Every promise that Caroline has ever made spins through her head. Her daughter doesn’t know her own family, the people who have sacrificed everything for her. “Our family,” she chokes out, thankful that Hope doesn’t notice the catch in her voice. She steadies herself before announcing, “Hope Violet Mikaelson, they’re going to love you so much.”

“They will?” She looks pleased but nervous, a young girl who has only known these people through tales that might as well be fictional for all that they affect her.

“Almost as much as I do,” Caroline whispers, and she is so close to bringing them back. All of them, because she will not rest once she has secured the backing power she needs to free Klaus. One last strain of werewolf venom, and then their family can be complete once again. 

Hope’s eyes go wide. “That’s a lot.” 

She leans down and kisses Hope’s forehead, wrapping an arm around the girl’s shoulders and squeezing. To give Hope comfort, yes, but also to draw strength for herself. “You’re right; that is a lot. I’ll tell you a secret,” she tells her in a soft voice, “I think your father might even love just as much I do. Maybe more.”

When she dreams, it is the complete family that she had wanted when they first learned of Hope’s existence. When motherhood was a reality she could barely imagine. Niklaus will come home to find how his daughter has grown, has inherited his artistic ability and his charm. He has always loved Hope, Caroline knows this, but loving a baby is different than loving a young child.

Hope has a personality, dreams of her own. Her father will be a stranger when he returns. 

Blinking sleepily, Hope says, “I don’t know about that.” She yawns, sinking deeper into the mattress, and Caroline smooths a hand over her hair. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you, too.” Caroline stays seated on the bed for a few minutes longer, watching as sleep overcomes her daughter. There is one more ingredient to be had, and she has a lead that should only take a few days to track. This solitary life will soon come to an end.

-x-

Caroline feels weak with relief for the first time in recent memory as she watches Rebekah and Elijah take down the remaining vampires. All that she has worked towards will come to fruition.

“How is my niece?” Elijah asks her when they are standing in a circle of corpses, and her laugh is entirely inappropriate, but it has been far too long. She pulls him into a hug, waving the other Mikaelson siblings in as well. Even Kol, who barely tolerates affection, cannot deny her this.

She pulls out photos to show them while they feed. For Freya, she had packed granola bars and various human snacks and essentials. For everyone else, they find an envoy of convicts cleaning the side of the highway. She’d have brought blood bags for efficiency if she didn’t know that Kol would have laughed in her face and insisted on finding his own meal anyway.

“Strawberry blonde,” Rebekah coos, perfectly enchanted by the photo of Hope holding up a tray of clumsily iced cookies, more sprinkles on the counter than on their intended target. 

“She is a cute munchkin,” Kol agrees, trying to get back on Caroline’s good side after he’d made the mistake of implying that Klaus could wait to be rescued. A few branches in the shoulder later and he’d been willing to apologize.

Her husband has endured unknown tortures for the past five years, all in the name of keeping his family safe and complete. If she wasn’t so certain that they would need everyone for his rescue mission, she’d have daggered Kol for even the suggestion that they leave his brother behind.

In all honesty, once Klaus is safe, she still might.

As they drive to New Orleans, she fills Freya in on Hope’s progress in magic. The charm on her bracelet works well, but Caroline knows her daughter is a curious child and has removed it before. So far she has achieved simple feats, blooming flowers, lifting feathers, but soon she will grow bolder. Freya will need to teach her how to control it, how to channel the current that runs through her body.

For now, she simply passes Freya a vial of Hope’s blood and one of her own to break the cloaking spell. Between the bond that she and Klaus share, it should be more than enough to find him.

-x-

She can feel it when Klaus is freed. There has been a pain, a heaviness within her very soul that she has lived with for so long that she has forgotten what it is to be free of it. It has happened before, short bursts that she gets to know that is being freed from the blade’s hold, however temporarily. This time, though, with Freya gone to collect him and break down the barriers, there can be no coincidence.

Klaus sags into her when he sees her, gathering her in his arms and breathing raggedly into her hair. His exhaustion is obvious to anyone, and Caroline pushes her hair over one shoulder and presents her neck to him. He’s had some blood since Freya released him, but not nearly enough to be at his full strength. 

“Drink,” she instructs him, because she’d prepared for this when on the road, having more than her fill in case they didn’t have a human with them when he returned.

With only a moment’s hesitation, he sinks both sets of fangs into her arterial vein and pulls hard. 

The sensation that washes over her is euphoric, knowing that her work has culminated in her family’s reunion. There is only one member that is missing. Soon they will return home and she can introduce Hope to the characters from her bedtime stories. 

She can’t stop the small moan that she lets out when he licks the wound closed, because it has been far too long. His lips twitch against the skin, giving away his amusement, and he leans back to look at her with golden eyes, checking for changes over the past years, confirming that she’s uninjured and whole. It is so like him, even when he is the one who has been captured and only barely kept from desiccation, to be more concerned with her wellbeing than his own.

“Not to spoil the reunion, but we should keep moving,” Kol interrupts them, and that’s it. He’s definitely getting daggered when they get back to the house.

“It pains me to side with Kol, but our brother is right. Marcel will be behind us shortly,” Elijah agrees.

“I’m already here.” Marcel strolls into the clearing as he announces himself, and Caroline remembers their last altercation all too clearly. “You shouldn’t have come back. None of you.” The last bit he says with emphasis, staring at Caroline as she shifts in front of Klaus without thinking.

Even when he tries to move past her, to stand in the forefront of Marcel’s path, she holds him back. He has born enough pain for this family. She will never leave him helpless again. 

The Mikaelson family faces off against one who was once one of them, the child that they raised. Rebekah is the only reason that Marcel shows any sign of softening, his love for her stronger and longer lasting than any affection he may have held for Klaus and Caroline at one point. 

“You’ve won, Marcel,” Klaus grits out, keeping a hand on his wife’s shoulder, prepared to pull her from harm’s way at a moment’s notice. “New Orleans was our city once, and now it is yours.”

They are too accustomed to being predators instead of prey, and being at a disadvantage is not something that Caroline is familiar with, but Klaus has been preparing for this since Marcel first plunged the blade into his chest. He knows what weaknesses to exploit, where to apply pressure and when to step off. “I’m offering you a chance at peace. Attempting to kill us all would be a mistake. Even if you managed it, one day our daughter would come for you,” he promises.

Caroline does not want for Hope to inherit an endless of cycle of violence, but she stays quiet. 

Marcel hesitates, looking at Rebekah briefly. He doesn’t want to hurt her, Caroline knows, and she hopes that her sister can see it clearly enough to take advantage of this opportunity. 

“We will leave and never come back,” Rebekah says, and Caroline watches how Marcel’s face shifts, knows that he’s accepted their terms even before he officially agrees to them.

-x-

Coming up the drive, Caroline tries to take the last turns gently so as to not wake the others. It’s late enough that Hope will be asleep, late enough that she’s the only one awake in the car, having insisted on driving since the others expended so much energy.

Klaus was the last one fighting to stay awake, unable to take his eyes away from her as he’d asked questions about everything he’d missed over the past five years. 

“How is our daughter?” he had asked, looking at her as though he was afraid of the reply.

“Perfect,” Caroline had answered, squeezing his hand. “She’s perfect.”

She’d told him that Hope’s first word was ‘wolf’ after a beloved stuffed animal, that she used to howl at the moon because she realized how it made Caroline laugh, and the first time she saw snow she hated walking in it so she only stood in Caroline’s footprints. Everything else he will be able to see for himself.

Soon, he will learn that her favorite fruit is strawberries and she spends the summer wandering the trails looking for wild ones. The sweet berries stain her lips and fingers, and Caroline thought she’d gotten into a blood bag the first time she saw it. She knows all of Klaus’s favorite records because they play them after dinner, dancing in the kitchen while they clean. Her favorite birthday gift last year was the miniature easel that stands in the studio they’ll share.

“We’re here,” she whispers when she parks the car and he stirs. 

Behind them, Elijah is grumbling about his suit getting creased during the drive, Rebekah is already pointing out what view she wants from her bedroom, and Freya is rolling out her neck. “Freya, we’re going to have to strengthen the wards tomorrow, could you…?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Freya responds as she gets out, touching her hand to the earth and looking around carefully. “What do you have right now?”

“Those who share Hope’s blood can enter; it’s concealed from everyone else. I called in a few favors, and it’s held up well, but…” Caroline trails off, looking at Hope’s bedroom window. Part of her had hoped that she’d still be awake, tired enough to be more concerned with getting to sleep later than with the strangers that she’s brought him. The light is off, though, and she can hear her breathing evenly through a REM cycle when she concentrates.

“Of course,” Freya demurs, and Caroline starts pointing out the different bedrooms once they’re in the house. Everyone has had something set up, even though she has no idea how many of them are going to stick around. It’s the thought that counts.

Klaus trails behind her up the stairs, and she’s pulling out dresser drawers before she notices that he isn’t in the room with her any longer. Across the hall, in the doorway to their daughter’s room, he watches Hope sleep with her wolf stuffed animal held tightly to her chest. 

“I’ll wake her up,” Caroline whispers, but he puts a hand to her shoulder to still her.

“Let her sleep.” His eyes are soft and overly fond, a rare expression, and Caroline’s vision clouds as she realizes what this means. He’s home, finally, and they can be a family.

No threats, no villains lingering in the shadows. There is a garden plot in the backyard where their daughter plays. A simple existence, the type that she first dreamed she would never know when they were turned. More than a thousand years have passed, and they have come full circle.

-x-

That night, she finds herself unable to sleep. For so long, Klaus’s breath on her neck and his steady heartbeat next to hers was a lullaby, but Caroline has slept alone for the past five years. The only sound in the house that she’s used to is her daughter’s coming from across the hall. With everyone together, there are seven heartbeats in the house’s walls. It’s loud enough to sound like a marching band.

She extricates herself from Klaus’s hold, careful to not disturb him. He needs as much rest as he can get. 

Checking on Hope isn’t a conscious decision so much as one that stems from a deep seeded paranoia and the awareness of just how many people that Marcel had on the lookout for them. Hope’s face is scrunched up in concentration, and she walks in and brushes her hand across her daughter’s temple to soothe her dreams.

With nothing else to do, she goes down to the kitchen and puts on the kettle. The cabinet to the left of the stove holds a few different types of tea, and she rifles through it quietly to find the peppermint blend she’d dried last summer. 

“Should I make another cup?” she asks when she hears footsteps, turning to find Elijah.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” he accepts, so she adds more water and gets another mug down. “I’d have thought you’d sleep well tonight.”

She shrugs, listening out for Klaus or Hope upstairs to make sure they’re still asleep. “It’s too loud,” she says at last, relieved when he doesn’t mention the stillness that surrounds them.

Other than Klaus, Elijah has always been the best at reading her. He doesn’t press for anything else, making the connection, understanding that she has lived a haunted and hunted life while she worked to get them back. There are shadows in her eyes that she doesn’t think used to be there.

“What’s your excuse?” Setting down the mugs, she goes back for cream and sugar, adding a spoonful of each to hers and leaving them on the table for him to use.

He lifts a corner of his mouth, reaching for the cream. “Freya is very talented at a great many things, but the beds she imagined for us did leave something to be desired. It seems I got used to it, though, because having anything softer is keeping me awake.”

When he sets the cream back in the fridge, he lingers in front of one of Hope’s artworks, the image of a bird on the railing of the front porch drawn in blue crayon. She draws so often that Caroline only keeps the recent works there; she has a box in the studio of older ones. 

They sit quietly, and Caroline thinks about asking for more details of what Freya’s magicked landscape for them consisted of, but she decides not to. Instead, she places her cups next to the sink when she finishes. “Help yourself to anything,” she says, even though she’d already told everyone when they arrived. “The bar in the dining room is stocked, and there are blood bags in the fridge if you need.”

The house is off the grid enough that finding nearby humans isn’t easy, and the truth of it is that Caroline would still keep the blood bags there even if they were. One of the easiest decisions she made when she and Hope first moved here was to keep her daughter away from the bloodshed that had always been nearby in New Orleans. 

If anyone wants to go out for a meal, they’re welcome to do so as long as they don’t try to bring it back.

Klaus stirs when she gets under the blankets, but he drifts off again when she gives him a kiss and pulls his arms around her. Squinting through the sleep in his eyes, she had seen a question form on his lips. 

“She’s fine,” Caroline tells him, and he nods before settling against her once more.

-x-

When she wakes up to a house filled with life, it takes a moment to realize that they aren’t in any danger. The noise that woke her was a pan being dropped in the kitchen and isn’t one of the wards going off. She takes a deep breath, consciously trying to relax before she listens out for what’s going on.

Kol is in the kitchen with Rebekah, apparently fussing with breakfast, and Freya and Elijah are on the porch. Concentrating, she hears a set of footsteps in the living room. Klaus, then, looking at the home that she has made for them. Which just leaves one person unaccounted for.

“Mom,” Hope whispers in the doorway, eyes shifting nervously when raucous laughter drifts up the stairs. “I hear people downstairs.”

Caroline props herself up on her elbows and holds her arms out for Hope to dive into them. “Remember how I told you that I was going to bring our family home?” She waits for Hope to nod before continuing, “Well, I brought them here last night, and they’re really excited to meet you.”

She can hear Klaus edging closer to the stairs, and she hates herself for hoping for a brief moment that he doesn’t come up. Hope has met so few strangers in her life, and it can take her a while to warm up to new people. It would be better for her to meet everyone one at time, but the most important thing is that Hope makes the decision for herself. The last thing that she wants is for anyone to be disappointed.

“They’re all here?” Hope asks, and Caroline is relieved to hear some level of excitement in her voice.

“All of them,” she whispers, squeezing her daughter tightly. “Your uncle Elijah and uncle Kol, and your aunt Freya and aunt Rebekah. I woke them up and they’re all okay.”

Hope looks down and takes the bait that Caroline has set up when she checks, “My dad, too, right?”

“Yeah, sweetheart. Of course I got your dad back. Are you ready to meet him?” Caroline smiles when she hears Klaus come up the stairs, relieved when he doesn’t immediately sweep into the room and risk overwhelming Hope and undoing the groundwork she’s been laying.

After a moment, Hope nods, and Caroline’s grin widens. Like it’s a secret, she whispers, “Well then, maybe we should tell him to come in.”

Klaus takes his cue and pushes the door open. If it’s possible, his expression is even softer than it was last night, taking in the sight of his wife and daughter before him.

“Hello, Hope,” he says with a gentle smile, and Caroline has never been more in love with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's where the story ends... No Hollow, no need for that kind of thing. I'm trying out happy endings this time!
> 
> I'm helpless-in-sleep on tumblr, I haven't been active in a while but I'm getting back into it!

**Author's Note:**

> I love the idea of Caroline being an Original and growing into her vampirism over the years with the rest of the family, specifically with Klaus. 
> 
> I toyed with the idea of including Esther's role in The Vampire Diaries and expanding the timeline of this into The Orginals, but I really think it's complete as is.


End file.
